


Total Dark Sublime

by DarknessAroundUs



Series: The Cooper-Jones Gang [2]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bank Robbery, Established Relationship, F/M, Kidnapped Betty, Southside Serpent Betty Cooper, Southside Serpent Jughead Jones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-29
Updated: 2018-09-20
Packaged: 2019-07-04 05:49:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15835026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarknessAroundUs/pseuds/DarknessAroundUs
Summary: Financially supporting the Serpents isn’t easy.OrA strange little domestic bank robbers, Bughead future fic, with criminal mastermind Betty.





	1. Finals Week

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: This is a future fic. It is canon compliant up to the end of season two. The first chapter takes place during the last week of high school. The rest of the story takes place 12 years in the future.
> 
> I placed the rating of this story as teen and up because of the violence and language in it. The first chapter is really the only one with violence. The first chapter while important in terms of transition and narrative flow, is also skip-able.

_“Were all stars to disappear or die,_

_I should learn to look at an empty sky_

_And feel its total dark sublime,_

_Though this might take me a little time."_

  * _W.H. Auden, The More Loving One  
  
_



Betty is walking home in the rain. She is using her blue umbrella to shield off the worst of the drops, but it only helps so much. It is the first week of June and barring an apocalypse, a week from now she will have graduated, though it is a hard week to get through, full of studying and details.

She starts to walk faster so that she can get home and back to work sooner. Her English paper won’t write itself. She is three blocks from home when she hears someone shout behind her, she turns towards the noise. Something heavy and black hits the top of her head. She feels her body falling, but she is unconscious before she hits the sidewalk. 

 

 

Betty smells mold, she feels damp.  She hears strange voices around her. At least two people are having a heated conversation, but she can’t follow it. The sound of their voices are muffled and she can’t make out the words at first, but then she hears the phrase serpent queen.

She tries to stand up even though she can’t see yet, and she finds that she can’t. She is tied to something. Probably a chair. Then she hears a deep male voice say “She’s awake.”

That is when she finds out that she can open her eyes. The room has one bare light bulb in the center. The walls are gray and the floor is unfinished. Clearly, she is in a basement. There is a drain directly below her. She knows she is in deep shit now but she doesn’t open her mouth to scream, a year ago she might of, two years ago she would of for sure, but she has learned to panic in silence, to panic in a way where no one around you can tell.

There are three men facing her. They all look tall, but she is tied to a chair so her perspective is skewed. They are all wearing leather jackets, not the familiar serpent jackets, or even the metal studded jackets of the now ~~destroyed~~ dismantled Ghoulies. These jackets have a wolf on them, snarling. She can only see the patch on one, the man facing away from her, the other two are staring at her. All three are in their mid-twenties, a little older than her. All of them are strangers.

She knew this gang, The Pack, they had started to come into town now that the Ghoulies were gone. They were still new, had only been here for a couple of months, but they had already caused problems. A couple of days ago Jughead’s apartment had been broken into and completely trashed. Even the garbage had been searched. It was now clear to Betty that The Pack had done that.

All three men are staring at her, but they aren’t saying anything. Betty is staying silent too. It is the only advantage she has, that and not panicking.

Her mom would still be at work. Jughead wasn’t coming by till 6 so it would still be a couple of hours at this point till anyone even suspected she was missing.

The tallest of the three, a man with long brown hair, approaches her, and presses his palms against her knees. She forces herself not to react. She is still wearing her jeans, but she could feel the heat of his hands through the denim. “It took you a long time to wake up.”

That sentence gave Betty some hope, Jughead could be looking for her right now.

“I didn’t see any reason to rush.” 

“Where does Jughead keep the drugs?” There was no beating around in the bushes with these guys. 

“I don’t know.” Betty replies, trying to maintain a neutral facial expression. The man hits her so hard in the chest, that the chair she was on goes flying backwards, hits the floor, and she blacks out again.

 

 

 

When Betty comes to the room is empty, the light still on. They had stood her chair upright again. At this rate, it seems inevitable that she would end up with a head injury. That was the worst consequence she would let herself think about.

She had no idea how much time has passed. Betty couldn’t give them what they wanted. She remembers last year, when she was still a junior, the first time she had been asked for drugs. She was at a party in Greendale, watching Veronica flirt with a guy from university when a boy around her age had approached her and asked to buy drugs. She wasn’t wearing a Serpent’s jacket, her tattoo wasn’t showing (it was in a place where it rarely showed), she had no idea how he spotted her. She looked in the mirror after the party and saw an innocent looking pastel clad teenager staring back.

Still she said what she would say countless times after, to many different people - “Here is a number you can call.” Now she has printed business cards with just the number on it, but back then she scrawled it down on a white piece of paper for him. She didn’t say that it was her boyfriend’s number, but everyone knew, that is why they were asking her in the first place.

When it first happened in Greendale she was shocked to be asked, even though she already knew all about the drugs. She just hadn’t thought about other people knowing about her connection to then.

Betty and Jughead had debated for a long time (and very loudly) about dealing. But after the trailer park was lost and the need to re-home serpents grew, it seemed like the only real solution. It was just supposed to be temporary, but of course, it wasn’t. The six apartments (and heat, electricity, food, and transportation) they were paying for were not going to start paying for themselves. Now they were going on two years of this - keeping 25 serpents afloat while three, Jughead, Joaquin, and Sweet pea dealt just enough to keep everyone going. 

Betty was thinking about this when the tall man re-entered. He was no longer wearing his jacket. He was wearing a white tank, not unlike the ones Jughead wore.

“Where are the drugs?” The man asked again. This time he had a knife. It didn’t seem like he was going to risk knocking her out again anytime soon.

“I don’t know.” Betty said. He pressed the knife against the back of upper arm and pushed it into her. She screamed then, stopping as soon as he removed the knife. She couldn’t see the blood, but she could feel it. running down to her elbow.

“Where does your boyfriend live?”

“You already know.” She says. “You searched his apartment two days ago.” She tries to focus on Jughead’s apartment. Not the trashed version, but the way it was most of the time, clean and basic. It was a studio, on the Southside in an old but well-maintained building. It was more her home than her mother’s house was. She tried to focus on the bookshelf, the pile of pillows they had turned into a reading nook.

Still it was hard to focus on anything but the knife dragging along the surface of her skin, threatening to pierce it again. There was already so much pain.

Betty had been beaten before, a year ago now, in one the last hurrahs by the Ghoulies but it was much more haphazard, and the fact that it had happened in the rear of the school had reassured her. They hadn’t kidnapped her, there were no knives. Still she had ended up in bed for a week because of it. She remembers that sour expression on Alice’s face. How Alice leaned over when she thought Betty was asleep and whispered “This is what you get for loving him. You earned this.” Betty keeps her eyes closed. 

“I can kill you.” the man said.

Betty steels herself. There was no point in begging. There was no way to change this man’s mind if he had decided to kill her. “You probably should.”

The man chuckled, “Why?”

“The last time Jughead found me injured by a rival gang, he killed a man.” That wasn’t entirely true, but it was closer to the truth than either of them admitted most of the time. They had nightmares about it still. “That gang is long gone now.”

“We heard about it.” He said. She knew that if he knew what her role was in that expulsion, he would kill her right now, so he clearly didn’t. By now Jughead would be searching for her, she knew it.

“I am only going to ask one more time. Where does he keep the drugs?” This time he pushed his knife into her leg, right around the ankle.

“I don’t know.” And she was glad she didn’t. She never let Jughead tell her because she always suspected she would be the weak link. Jughead rarely traveled alone anymore. Sweat Pea or Joaquin were with him half the time, Toni occasionally. Betty was the more vulnerable one. Jughead had tried to change that. For a while after the last attack he’d forced Toni on her, and while the two of them got on well now, Betty valued her alone time too much to put up with it for long. Now she was regretting that.

The pain took over again. She tried to force the stray thoughts out of her head. She tried to focus on anything. His outfit, the light, and finally she found that the only way through was to focus on the pain. The way it felt to have a knife in her arm. When he removed the knife, nothing felt better. She was light headed. She realized if the man didn’t patch her up soon she was going to bleed out.

 

 

She woke up and the overhead light was off, the basement was pitch black, and her whole body was throbbing. She could tell right away that they had in fact patched her up. She wondered why. After all she had made it perfectly clear she didn’t know the whereabouts of the drugs. She didn’t think she would be of much use to them now. More of a liability really. Though she hoped they didn’t think of that. She desperately wanted to live.

She could hear people walking on the floor above her, she could hear them talking, but not well enough to make out any of the words. Most houses in Riverdale had unfinished basements, so she really hadn’t a clue where she was. She couldn’t even tell if she was on the Northside or the Southside.

Betty tried to move her body a bit in the chair, but pain spiked through her. Damn it. She tried to focus on good things.  Jughead late at night when he was so tired and she was so tired, they could barely manage to stay awake, but still they had so much to talk about in the dark. The four of them at Pop’s before Archie and Veronica had broken up and moved away. Last summer when she and Jughead took that road trip to Boston and neither of them had to do anything for the Serpents that week (honestly running a gang, was a lot like having children, in her opinion – relentless responsibility).

The way Polly was now, happily ensconced in a new relationship. The way Jughead knew her better than she knew herself sometimes. The way milkshakes tasted after a long run. The way she felt when it was just the two of them in his apartment and they both slipped their rings on. All of these thoughts could not overwhelm the pain or the fear she felt, building in her stomach, like acid. Any moment someone could come in and start torturing her all over again.

She was helpless. She might die here, but she couldn’t let her mind dwell on that. Jughead would find her, the Serpents were resourceful when they needed to be. Three months ago when it looked like Jug was going to jail, and the sheriff was summoning her every two days for questioning, everything had seemed hopeless, yet they had gotten out of that well before the court date. 

The door opened and the room flooded with light for a moment, and then the bare bulb above her flicked on. It was a different man this time. He had no knife. He was shorter. He was wearing his leather jacket. His hair was so blond it was almost white.

“We are ransoming you. Your boyfriend has till 7 PM tomorrow to drop off the drugs.”

Betty knew it wouldn’t end there. The drugs weren’t enough. They would want the name of the middleman. They would want the Serpents out of the market, and she was fine with that right now. She didn’t say anything though. She had learned to be scary, even while chained. Silence can be terrifying.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” The man asked again.

Betty was grateful for the power the silence gave her, she focused on that instead of the pain.

“He agreed to the deal.” Betty didn’t say anything. She knew there was no question for Jughead, her life was the priority. He didn’t care about the drugs. It wasn’t like he ever used them. It would be back to the drawing board for them, in terms of how to support the Serpents, but they would figure out. They were two years older, two years wiser.

“We don’t plan to return you in one piece though.” The man says. Betty feels the air swoop out of her. She remains silent, her feet twitching anxiously. The man leaves the room, the light still on.

She hates living in fear. She remembers when she first became "queen", when she and Jughead first realized the extant of work they faced in terms of supporting the gang, how every day felt tinged with fear, fear of failure mostly, but there was unrest in the gang too, so there was fear of a revolt at well. At some point her whole life adjusted, so that she became accustomed to that level of fear, it became the new normal. Not that revolt was an issue now. The gangs financial stability over the last year had ensured that.

Earlier this year she remembers the fear she felt after Jughead was arrested, the daily worry that he would be in jail. Even that she got used to after a point, but jail isn’t death.  She is so much stronger than she used to be but she isn’t sure she is strong enough for this. She can’t imagine becoming accustomed to the amount of fear she feels now. Her mind couldn’t sustain it.

Archie moved to Chicago last year because he couldn’t handle the stress of being in Riverdale anymore. Now they still talked to him over videochat most weekends, but it was different. He seemed so much younger than they were. His responsibilities only extending as far as school, the occasional weekend job. That had been true for them for a long time though. Maybe the distance just made it more apparent.

Veronica had left too, for a boarding school that vastly improved her chances of getting into an ivy league school (her grades had never been the best). She had been fearful by then, often giving excuses to Betty to get out of spending time together.

If you had told a younger Betty Cooper that Veronica Lodge would end up afraid of her, she would have laughed at the absurdity. Clearly though the path she was taking in this world was not the one she expected as a freshman or sophomore.

Sometimes at night when she and Jughead were snuggle chatting in bed she would blame her father for her change. Finding out that he was a serial killer was life altering, even minus the months of mental torture he put her through, and the fact that she had to be the one to bring him down. Hal was the catalyst, more than Jughead joining the Serpents, more than any other single factor it came down to him, that much was true.

Besides what her father did changed her mother irrevocably. The Alice who raised her was sharp and manipulative, controlling beyond reason. Alice post divorce relinquished most of her power. She and Betty had a much better relationship now that Betty only lived with her on every other week. In a way, it was like after a normal custody agreement, except instead of spending one week with her father (in prison and never visited) and one week with her mother, she spent one with Jughead and one with Alice. 

But the serpents couldn’t be factored out of her change entirely. The sight of Jughead’s body, a bloody mess in his father’s arms could not be factored out at all. FP leaving town, leaving his responsibilities to Jughead completely, also played a role. She was a sum of her past. This too would change her if she survived, she realized. Not just the beatings, but the waiting, the time spent tied to a chair with no control over her fate. The time where she was trying to focus on anything but the room around her.

She tries to move her arms again, but no luck, they were tightly bound together. Her legs too. She wasn’t getting out of here on her own strength, unless something changed. Her two hopes were prisoner exchange or Jughead finding her first. 

Betty worried for hours. The same thoughts circling over and over in her head. No matter how hard she tried to focus on the positive, the reality of the situation, the reality of pain, was ever present. She was also thirsty, desperately so. She didn’t know how long it had been since she had a drink of water, but it could have been days.

Eventually she dozed awkwardly, her neck unsupported, her body stiff. She woke up and could see the blond man staring at her. He was standing still, and it looked like he might have been watching her in her sleep for a while. The thought gave her chills.

“12 more hours to go.” The man said. Betty didn’t want to speak to him, but she was so thirsty.

“Could I have water?”

“So you can talk.” The man said, leaving the room for a minute and returning with a glass. He placed it near Betty’s lips and she managed to take a few awkward sips.

“Thank you.” She regretted saying those words, but Alice Cooper had trained her too well. 

The man took a step back as if apprising her.  “You are not what I expected.”

“What did you expect?”

“Piercing’s, dyed hair, ripped jeans.” In a different context, Betty would have laughed at the way he so perfectly described Toni. “I wasn’t expecting the valedictorian. And once I was told who you were, once I saw your pictures, I didn’t expect you to see such a bitch.”

Betty doesn’t think she deserved that. For one thing she just said thank you (non sarcastically) to someone who tortured her. But she is silent. She should have stayed with that strategy the whole time. It is the safest.

The man moves closer to her, and Betty wonders if he called her a bitch to psych himself up for what he was going to do to her next.

He takes a swing at her face and her nose cracks, he gets behind the chair and slams it forward and her knee cap feels like it explodes outwards. She screams again.

The man takes a step back and he looks at her with an almost pleased expression on his face. Although maybe it’s just the angle. She has to strain her neck to see him at all, now that her face is pressed against the floor.

“Why did you do that?” Betty asks. Even though she knows she would have a little of the upper hand if she remained silent she can’t help asking this.

“Because I want you to go back to him broken and ugly. I want Jughead to know we destroyed you. He will never look at you the same way again. Even if he stays with you.”

As awful as the situation is, as much pain as she is in, she can’t help but laugh. She is not someone without doubts, but Jughead’s love is not one of them. The idea that it is tied to her looking the same way is absurd. She’s been destroyed, he’s been destroyed, but they have not been destroyed in a long time.

She hears the man murmur “crazy bitch” as he walks out, the door closing behind him. She falls asleep with her face against the cement floor.

She wakes to cool night air, the smell of wet grass. She looks up into Jughead’s face. He is carrying her body in his arms. They are outside and it is light out. Her hands are free now and her feet. Everything aches. Her eyes meet his and she sees that he’s crying.

“I’m Ok, Jug.” She says, only then does he realize she is conscious.

“I love you, Betts.” He says, walking faster. “We are taking you to the hospital, now.”

“No. They’ll ask questions. I will be fine.” She says. They haven’t done hospitals in years. She had removed a bullet once, using a youtube tutorial. It wasn’t something she would recommend doing, but it had worked.

“It’s worse than you think.” Jughead said shaking his head. She thought it couldn’t possibly be, there was so much pain, but a hospital wasn’t going to fix that faster, necessarily.

She wondered now suddenly, what had happened to the tall man, the blond haired one. She looks at Jughead questioningly.

“I am not sure you want to know.” He said answering her unspoken question. Someone else opened the door, Joaquin maybe, and Jughead slid her into the back seat. Her whole body felt the movement, and hated it.

Toni was in the driver’s seat and when she turns around a sickened look covers her face, “Shit.” Toni opens her door and throws up on the curb.

“That bad?” Betty said, trying to keep her tone of voice light.

Sweat Pea slipped into the front seat and said “Let’s just say I’m glad....”

“Shut it.” Jughead comments, as he lifts Betty’s legs up slowly (and painfully for her) so he could slide into his seat. She stays silent even as her body screams in pain. She wants him there, as close as could be.

“I love you.”

“I love you too, Betts.” she hears him say as she passes out again.

 

 

 

She came to in the hospital, surrounded by machines, Jughead’s arms beside her, his face pressed in sleep against the hospital bed even though his body is on a chair. 

The next time she wakes up he is awake, holding her hand. He kisses her cheek gently. It was a good thing she was still covered by her mom’s insurance otherwise they would be paying this off forever.

When she wakes up again, he isn’t there at all. Instead a nurse is there. She asks Betty a few questions before leaving the room. Five minutes later, Sheriff Keller enters. She wasn’t expecting him yet. Was he the reason Jughead was not here?

“Hello Betty.”

“Hi Sheriff.”  

“What happened?”

“I was jumped by strangers. I have no clue why.”

“Really?” The sheriff asks in a tone that made it clear he didn’t buy it. She nods. “Are you sure Mrs. Jones?” He asks.

Goose bumps emerge from the surface of her skin. “I kept my last name actually.” 

“Did you get married for the spousal privileges?” The sheriff asks softly. Betty nods. It wasn’t the only reason, of course, far from it, but they were worried that if Jug’s case went to trial Betty would have to testify without protection unless they married. Thankfully the whole case was thrown out a few weeks later, and they hadn’t had to use that privilege yet, but if they continued down this path they would need it at some point.  

“Who really did this to you?” The sheriff asks.

“I don’t know.” Betty replies honestly. She knew the name of the gang, but none of the names of the individuals who did this to her.

The sheriff sets down and takes her hand “Did Jughead do this to you?”. Betty laughs in spite of the pain. A look of relief crosses the sheriff’s face.

“Ok. I can’t do anything if you don’t tell me anything.” The sheriff says standing up.

“I know.”

“Jughead’s going home to get your marriage license, by the way.  They kicked him out for not being family so he went to get proof.”

“Oh.” Betty replies, the sheriff could be nicer than he had to be sometimes “Thanks.”

“Take care of yourself.” Keller says as he leaves. Sometimes Betty wonders if he was so nice to her still because of Kevin.  

“I will.” She says. She tries to stay awake till Jughead returns but she drifts off again.

When she wakes Jughead is up already, head bent. He is playing with his wedding ring, which he is now wearing on his ring finger.

“How am I doing?” She asks. His head jerks up and he looks at her full of love. 

“Good.” He said. “They fixed your broken nose, they sewed up the cuts, you are well on the way to mending.” His expression looked distant as he says these things. 

“What about the leg?” She knew something had to be wrong with it. It still didn’t feel right, even with her just lying here, and that was with the pain medication dulling everything.

“They had to do knee surgery. It seems to have helped a lot, but they think you might always limp because of it. It was a mess in there.”

Shit. That was not a news update she wanted to here. Her face must have made it clear because Jughead’s eyes met hers, and he said “I am so sorry, Betty. So sorry.”

Last time when she’d been jumped by the Ghoulies he had said he was going to leave her, for her own safety, but apparently the talking to she’d given him then, had convinced him not to go down that path again - thank goodness.

“We are no longer selling drugs. I realized as long as we stay in that game we are going to have other gangs gunning for us. It’s never going to stop, no matter how many we take down.  We are getting out.” He says. He looks at her as if he expects her to fight him on this one, but she’s not going to. 

“I agree.”

“You do?” He is clearly shocked. After what had happened with the Ghoulies it was her who had talked him into still dealing.

“I do.”

“Thank goodness. I mean we can try and figure out another way to support the Serpents. But if we can’t, it doesn’t really matter to me. You’re my top priority.” 

Betty finds herself smiling in spite of the pain. “That is good, but I think I’ve figured out a different way to support the Serpents already.”

“Oh?”

“I actually had already started researching it before I was kidnapped.”

Jughead looks at her curiously. “So, what is it?”

“It is going to sound outlandish at first….” Betty stopped talking for a minute, because she knew this wasn’t going to be an easy sell, and she wasn’t sure she had the energy for it at the moment.  

“Go on.”

“What do you think about robbing banks?”

Jughead laughs, a true belly rumble of a laugh. “The nurses didn’t mention anything about a head injury.”

 

TBC…


	2. Soccer Mom Versus FBI

 

**Twelve Years Later**

 

1.

 

Betty honks the car horn. The mammoth silver SUV blocking the lane in front of her doesn’t budge. Instead a women gets out and shoots Betty a nasty grimace before letting two kids out of the back, kissing them both. She is not even bothering to rush.

 

The school has a strict drop off policy for a reason. This women is breaking all the rules, but Betty’s kids were the ones who would be punished if they were late.

 

Betty leans on to the horn. The mom flips Betty the bird. Betty bites her bottom lip. The rest of the parents at Crescent School are crazy. Betty gives the women the finger right back. One of them was breaking the rules and it wasn’t Betty.

 

“Mom, no swearing!” Parker says.

 

“Are we going to be late again?” Lucy asks.

 

“Not if I can help it.” Betty glances at the time.

 

The silver SUV finally drives off. Hopefully it is only this crazy because it is September and all the new parents are still figuring it out. This is Parker’s first year, because he just turned five but it’s Lucy’s third year so Betty already knows the ropes.

 

Finally, she is able to pull into the pre-approved drop off spot. The teacher on duty gives Betty a grateful smile for obeying the rules.

 

“I love you both.” Betty says as the kids scramble out of the car.

 

“Don’t embarrass me.” Lucy replies, but she still has a smile on her face. Lucy is all Jughead, from the dark hair to her lanky build and casual sarcasm.

 

“Love you too.” Parker says. Parker looks more like Betty, his hair brown, his eyes green, he manages to be both kind and stubborn.

 

Betty gets back in the car and pulls out of the drop off area. Her cell phone starts to ring over the Bluetooth. She picks it up.

 

“Hi, baby.” Jughead says. “How did it go?”

 

“How do you think? It’s the first week of school. It was a mess. I’m only getting out of here now, so I am running late.”

 

“It’s no big deal. No one else is here yet, even. I am just glad you didn’t lose your temper with any of the other mothers.”

 

“Jug, that was one time.”

 

“We almost had to switch schools because of it.”

 

“You would have done the same thing in my shoes.” She can hear him laugh softly. She even knows what kind of smile he is making on the other end of the line.

 

“True. Who knew school drop off would become such a high-stake enterprise.”

 

It is her turn to laugh. “The other night I fantasized about showing up in my Serpent’s jacket, just to freak the other mother’s out.”

 

She’s driving along the freeway now, and the traffic isn’t bad at all for this time of day. She still has a fair way to drive before she hits Brooklyn though.

 

“They wouldn't have freaked out. The Crescent School mothers couldn’t spot a gang jacket to save their lives. They would probably confuse it for high fashion and compliment on it, before driving off to the country club for lunch.”

 

“The fate of being a suburban mom.”

 

“Not your fate. Or rather a small part of your fate. But if it makes you feel better, I will drop the kids off all next week.”

 

“It would.”

 

“Done. Oh, Toni just got here, I better go.”

 

“Ok.”

 

“I love you – see you soon.” with that he hangs up.

 

2.

 

Jughead is sitting in the apartment that they maintained as a meeting house, waiting for Betty. The apartment has two old sofas, a table with chairs, a few water glasses, a white board, and almost nothing else in it. None of them had ever lived here. Joaquin is typing on his laptop, Sweet Pea is swiping left on his phone, and Toni is rambling on for far too long about the bad date she had been on, how the woman left halfway through the meal for no good reason.

 

Finally Jughead can’t stop himself “Do you think it is because you keep using those dating sites?”

 

“Jughead, I don’t want dating advice from you.”

 

“Why are you telling me all this then?”

 

“To vent. Your opinion on dating is entirely irrelevant.”

 

“Why? I am in a happy long-term relationship.” Jughead says, drumming his fingers against the kitchen table.

 

“Yes, and you have been in one for 14 years, and married for 12 of those years. You don’t know what it’s like to date today. Hell, do you even remember what it’s like to not be married?” Toni asks.

 

It is a question, Jughead would rather not answer, just being asked it makes him feel old and he is only thirty. Dropping the kids off at school always made him feel young though. All the other parents that could afford to send their kids to school there were in their late thirties, early forties.

 

“So what you are saying is that you would rather have someone give you advice who has never been in a relationship, because I am pretty sure Sweet Pea would oblige.” Jughead couldn’t keep the grin off his face when he said that. Sweet Pea laughs.

 

“No.” Toni, says shaking her head. “I guess I don’t really have anyone to ask dating advice from.”

 

“Hey!” Joaquin protests.

 

“No offense, but you’ve been in a relationship almost as long as Jughead.”

 

“But I’m not married!”

 

“You might as well be.” Joaquin couldn’t argue with that line, and Jughead just shook his head.

 

“I actually think Jughead’s dating advice would be worth listening to, if just for the comedy value.” Sweet pea says, smirking.

 

“I can see that.” Toni jokes. Then in her well-practiced fake Jughead voice she says “Always tell your girl you love her instead of saying goodbye. Make sure to put a ring on it as soon as you legally can. Spousal privileges is a great excuse, but there are others.”

 

Betty enters about halfway through the monologue and she has a big smile on her face. She places a large reusable grocery bag on the kitchen table. When Toni stops talking Betty claps lightheartedly. Toni grabs her and pulls her into a hug.

 

“It’s been too long.” Toni says with a sigh.

 

“I’ve miss you but the FBI’s been on my case, so I’ve been trying to fly under the radar. I can’t even go into Whole Foods without being watched. It’s exhausting.” Betty says. “I just want to buy organic chicken thighs in peace.”

 

Everyone laughs except Jughead who has been putting up with an anxious wife for weeks now. He gets followed too, but not with nearly as much vigilance. Betty spends hours on the treadmill in their basement, just working off steam.

 

“But you got here fine?” Jughead asks.

 

“Yes. I lost them before I even left Tarrytown.” She says, leaning down to kiss him. Then she turns her attention back to the grocery bag where she pulls out sandwiches and homemade chocolate chip cookies.

 

Everyone moves to the table and starts eating. Betty and Toni speak to each other quietly, full of minor updates. Normally Toni came over a few times a week, but lately it has just been once a week. Everyone’s time was occupied by their individual preparations of the next job, their biggest bank robbery yet, and their last one. It might only take one day to rob a bank, but it takes a lot of preparation to do it right.

 

After the food was consumed Betty starts writing out the plans on the white board. The plans were not for robbing one bank, but two. They only ever robbed one but Betty didn’t tell anyone which one till the day of. Not even Jughead.

 

Betty did all the research, and was largely in charge of the details of the plan, although she encouraged suggestions. In the early days she was often key to the execution of the plan, this once resulted in her spending two nights locked in a bank vault, but as the FBI focused their investigation more on her, she had to excuse herself from actual participation.

 

Jughead and Sweat Pea tended to be the ones caught on camera (masked of course), and if it was an old fashioned hold-up, Joaquin would join them on the floor. Toni was largely the getaway driver. But all played different roles in the set-up, depending on the robbery itself. This time for the first time in years, Sweet Pea would be working in one bank and Joaquin in the other one.  They had actually started employment over six months ago. 

 

The robbery itself was three weeks away so they had just started to run rehearsals in the small apartment.  Three hours was all they had before Betty had to bow out to get groceries and pick up the kids.

 

As Betty is leaving, Sweet Pea asks if she thinks this will actually be the last job. Betty looks contemplative for a bit.

 

“It has to be. We’ve made more than enough money to take care of The Serpents which is why we got into this in the first place, and I am completely over being followed by the FBI. I mean if you guys want to continue without me you are free to do so, but this is it for me.”

 

“Me too.” said Toni, Sweet Pea and Joaquin all at the same time. All three of them looked at Jughead, surprised he hadn’t said anything.

 

“Oh, Betty and I are a package deal. Have you guys still not figured that out?”

 

Toni laughs. “It’s just that last time Betty said she was out, you dragged her back in.” Which had led to the biggest fight that they had in almost a decade. An event that would not happen again because as much fun as Jughead had robbing banks, Betty took precedent, as did their children. The fact that he didn't realize that last time right away was all on him, but it was not a mistake he would make again.

 

Because they had been so successful at it, for so many years, Betty sometimes had to remind him how risky it was. How the fact that the FBI was investing more resources into their case was in no way a good sign. That as smart as she was (because their success came down to her in the end), if they kept doing this they would not be the ones raising their children. They could not get away with this forever. Even one last job was risky.

 

He had made mistakes before that she had paid for. Twelve years ago he was pushing their luck, and she had paid the price. He could not let that happen again.

 

3.

 

Ryan Lang was late for his first day of work in the new division. He has been in the FBI for two years now, and this was his first big promotion to an active case.

 

Agent Smith buzzes him through the door into the office, a stern expression on his face. He hands Ryan his new pass card and keys without saying anything.

 

“I am sorry I am late.” Ryan says, hoping the apology will help ease their interaction. Agent Smith looks surprised.

 

“Oh, I’m not mad at you. We just lost the suspect we are tailing, again. It’s frustrating.” Ryan is relieved that the cause of the irritation is someone other than himself.  “Did they tell you what case you are working on?” Smith asks.

 

“No, they said you would bring me up to speed”.

 

Smith nods and leads Ryan into his new office. It is identical to Ryan’s old office, white and sterile, without even a window to alleviate the monotony. Smith taps his hand on a large cream color file on Ryan’s new desk. “All the information you need to get started is in here. After you read it come find me, and I will update you on a new development and answer any questions you have.

 

“Ok.” Ryan settles into his new chair, which is exactly like his old chair and opens the file as Smith disappears around the corner, presumably to go into his own office and sit in his own identical chair.

 

Ryan opens the file which is marked The Cooper-Jones Gang. The first page has a picture of a man with long-ish dark hair, a narrow face, and blue eyes and says Forsythe Pendleton Jones III alias Jughead alias FP3 along the top. The page contains all the basic information about the man photographed, including the number of times he has been arrested (5), and the number of times he has been convicted (0).

 

The next page contains a picture of a striking blond women, with a slightly irregular nose (as if it had been broken before), and green eyes. The name at the top says Elizabeth Cooper alias Betty. Although Ryan thinks Betty doesn’t really count as an alias as it is clearly of an abbreviation. Betty has never been arrested.

 

Ryan pours through the rest of the information. It takes him about two hours to read it the first time, and then he spends another hour reviewing the facts and taking notes. The file itself covers almost a decade although there are big gaps in the updates, and he could tell by the varying note taking styles that at least a dozen agents had been on this case at one time or another. There are a lot of details to take in.

 

By lunch time he can’t stare at the file any longer. He unwraps his sandwich and eats it in the quiet of his office before tracking down Agent Smith. Smith is sitting at his computer, intently watching the screen. When he finally notices Ryan in the doorway he waves him into the office.

 

“Our tail found her again.”

 

“Who?”

 

“Betty Cooper. She is really good at losing us when she needs to though, so she is probably just going to the grocery store now. It is too early for her to pick the kids up from school. What did you think of the file? Any questions?”

 

“The file is confusing. I don’t really know what to do with it, honestly. There is lots of raw data, but barely any context or analysis.” Ryan offers with a shrug.

 

 “Yes, well this is a particularly difficult case. The Cooper-Joneses are smart.”

 

“Are they connected?” Ryan asks. He doesn’t care how smart they are, it is really difficult to get away with robbing banks, and the only way he can see it happening is if they are protected by organized crime in some way.

 

“No. Or at least not really. As teenagers they led the Serpents, a small motorcycle gang up-state. You saw that on the file right?”

 

Ryan nods. He had never heard of the Serpents before, and his area of focus in his last job had been gangs in New York, so they could not have been particularly successful. All of the other suspected members of the bank robbery team were Serpents as well though, so there was a tie there at least.

 

Agent Smith continued “I do have good reason to believe the Cooper-Joneses are still involved in the Serpents, at least from a distance. But I think the Cooper-Joneses help the Serpents, not the other way around.”

 

“How so?” Ryan was looking at Agent Smiths computer screen now. Betty Cooper was on it, strolling through a Whole Foods and placing items in her shopping cart. It was not an exciting scene. He could tell just from the angle that they were watching her through the grocery stores video system, and not from an agent’s camera.

 

“The Cooper-Jones Gang has stolen millions of dollars, yet we have never caught them, or any of their associates spending any of the money. Everyone has at least part time day job’s. Betty is really good at hers.”

 

Ryan had seen that on the file. Betty was a research analyst. She ran a very successful newsletter for investment companies. He had looked it up and was surprised both by how respected it was and how much a subscription cost. Although it made sense, according to everything in the rest of the file Betty’s great strength was research. That was her role in the gang. The others handled the more physical matters of actually robbing a bank.

 

“The Serpents, all 52 of them and their families, are now supported by a trust. The trust is sealed, but with Betty’s investor connections it would not be very difficult to set up. I think that is where a lot of the money is going. The Southside, the part of Riverdale the Serpents are from has started to revitalize, yet there is no clear source of the cash, outside of the Cooper-Jones.

 

“Are you sure they aren’t making that money through drugs or something?”

 

“No, it’s been a solid five years since a single Serpent has been arrested or under suspicion for anything. Even before that, there was only the occasional DUI. They weren’t always clean, but they are now.”

 

Ryan feels confused by this entire scenario. “A clean gang, a suburban married couple leading one of the most successful group of bank robbers in the last twenty years, and no obvious money trail. This feels like a bit of a dead-end case.”

 

“I would have agreed a few days ago, but we recently had an unexpected break.” Smith smiles for the first time since Ryan has met him then. “An old friend of the Joneses is an undercover agent, and after months of attempting to reconnect with them, they seem to have found success. We finally have a chance of having a man, or rather a women on the inside.”

 

4.

 

Veronica shuffls her feet, while Archie rings the doorbell. The Jones’s house was nothing like she expected. It is a perfectly restored three-story Victorian in the sleepy village of Tarrytown, an hour on the metro north from Grand Central. It has a large fenced in backyard with a swing set peeking out.

 

Betty opens the door. When she sees Archie, a huge smile lights up her face. She wraps him in a hug, then she spots Veronica and gives her a tight smile "Veronica, it has been a long time. Welcome to our house."

 

"Thanks B." Veronica follows Archie into the house. The foyer was all polished wood and built in cabinets.

 

Veronica hasn't seen Betty in over a decade. Betty looks a little older now, but not much. Her hair was back in a bun instead of a ponytail and she was wearing a simple blue cotton dress. Veronica notices a small wooden ladder tattoo-d on her ankle, next to a long thin scar. The scar is the one hint that Betty is not the average housewife.

 

"Oh, I like your ink!" Veronica says, trying to put some warmth in her voice.

 

"What is showing?" Betty asks with a wink.

 

Archie laughs "I think she just noticed the ladder on your Achilles."

 

"I am a little surprised that you turned out to be a tattoo girl." Veronica says as they enter the kitchen.

 

"You know what they say. Once you get one there is no going back. They are addictive."

 

"So what was the first one?" Veronica asks.

 

Betty looks at Veronica as if she should already know the answer to the question. "A serpent tattoo, though I didn't have much choice about that one." Veronica had still been friends with Betty when she got it. She remembers seeing it once, right after it was tattooed. The skin around it was still red. It was between Betty’s shoulder blades but a little lower. It was small and not particularly notable.

 

"How many do you have now?" Veronica asks, trying to steer them back to safe territory.

 

"Wouldn't you like to know?"

 

"Six that I’ve seen." Archie says with a grin.

 

"Spoilsport. Would you like a drink?"

 

"Yes. Beer please." replies Archie before adding "and red wine for Ronnie."

 

Betty grabs an IPA from the fridge before saying "I have to grab wine from the cellar. Jug should be home any minute with the kids." With that Betty disappears down stairs.

 

"This is really weird. It feels a bit like I skipped to the end of the book all of the sudden." Veronica says.

 

Archie laughs. "I guess I know what you mean because that is a little how I felt about running into you in Grand Central Station after all those years! It was such a wonderful surprise." It wasn't for Veronica who had planned the meeting for weeks.

 

She wasn't sure what, if anything Archie had to do with the Cooper-Jones gang before she arranged the “accidental meeting” in Grand Centeral Station, but she knew he was still their friend, and he was her only in. Betty had already rejected three friend requests on Facebook. Archie had been eager to have Veronica back in his life, and it had only taken a week before they started dating. Now they were two months into a relationship, and she was sure Archie had no idea about the double lives Betty and Jughead lived.

 

Archie kisses Veronica and she feels desire. This might be a job, but she didn't have to ignore her feelings entirely. At that moment Jughead enters with his kids.

 

"Hey! There are children here."

 

The girl rolls her eyes "You and mom do way worse all the time."

 

"I thought I taught you better manners than to air our dirty laundry.” Betty says with a smile, having emerged from the cellar with a bottle of expensive red.

 

Veronica used to be the wealthiest one in the room, though that clearly was not the case anymore. The Joneses were not wealthy in the way the Lodges once were, but Veronica now made do (or tried to) with a rather limited budget.

 

Betty introduces the kids as Parker and Lucy. Veronica wasn't comfortable with kids, she was never sure what to do with them. Archie was though, in a minute he and Jughead were out in the yard playing with them.

 

Veronica and Betty catch up as Betty puts the finishing touches on dinner. Veronica tries to stick to strictly safe areas of conversation, nothing deep, and it seems to be going well. Veronica was starting to believe she could re-earn Betty's trust over time. By the time the kids head off to bed and Betty brings out desert Veronica realizes how few words she and Jughead have exchanged. He had talked to Archie a fair amount and much like high school he couldn't keep his hands off of Betty, and he often whispered something into her ear, but he hadn't said more than pass the salt to Veronica.

 

When Jughead returns from putting the kids to bed Veronica asks Jughead what he's doing these days.

 

"Mostly writing and dad duty." He replies before turning towards Archie and asking how his job teaching music is going.

 

Veronica hates being deliberately ignored, but Archie doesn't seem to notice. Normally she would make her displeasure known and leave but she has to be here, this is her job. And if she brought down dear old Hiram she was strong enough to bring down the Joneses. She just had to win them over first.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All of the chapters will be divided into parts from now on.
> 
> I am so grateful for any and all comments!


	3. The Calm Before

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! I was busy finishing my other WIP and also I had to get ahead in this one, to figure out the logistics of the robbery, so updates should be much more timely after this (baring sick babies and/or husbands). 
> 
> Oh and the chapter count went up, but just by one.

1.

Toni was trying to find the right getaway car. Or rather she had found the right getaway car and now it was up to her and Jughead to buy it. 

Toni had made it clear that she would have preferred Betty to be her partner in crime, but Betty had 1) a busy day of bill paying work ahead of her, 2) a much more effective task FBI force on her this week, and 3) an ongoing barely controlled panic attack thanks to the FBI (their tax dollars at work). 

Jughead suggested they call the whole thing off, but Betty insisted on re-working the plan in a way that directly involve the FBI. Jughead is trying to not have a panic attack about that plan. 

Toni slips on a fake wedding ring and he is already wearing his real one. 

“Are you ready to buy the car honey?” She asks.

“Of course, sweetie.” He says with a smile. 

“I once broke up with someone for calling me sweetie.” 

“Stay in character.” Jughead climbs out of the car. 

“Fine, babycakes.” 

Jughead grimaces. He would like to one up Toni on that one but it would be impossible. 

They approach the used car dealership. Neither of them looked like their normal selves. Toni’s hair was dyed something close to her natural hair color and is pulled back in a pony tail, she is wearing heels and long pants, and this combination gave her the illusion of height. Jughead’s hair was died a sandy color (very close to Parker’s natural hair color) and he was wearing khaki pants and an Egyptian cotton suit shirt. The names on their fake ID’s were Sarah James and Luke James.

They had tried buying cars from individuals before, but that had ended up being far more complicated than anticipated. Individuals selling their own vehicle turned out to be more likely to pry. Used car dealers tended to be more jaded, less likely to actually keep track of information. 

They never used the same dealer twice and often went well out of their way to find them, which is how they ended up in the middle of nowhere New Jersey. As soon as they entered the dealership they were met by an older overweight man, who smiled broadly at Toni.

“Sarah, it is so nice to see you again. This must be the hubby? I’m Gus, it’s nice to meet you.”

Jughead shook his hand and said “I’m Luke.” 

With that Gus took them to the car. It was an older model BMW 7 series. Toni wanted it because it was the “Transporter” car. Jughead usually didn’t place such value on sentimentality, but it was their last job and it was a good car. 

After the test drive they agree to buy the car. They show their ID’s and finish up the paperwork and it’s theirs. Back when they did their first job and they didn’t have a budget for a getaway car (or fake ID’s, or even hair dye really), this was a lot tougher, and more by the seat of their pants. Now Jughead likes to think of them as a smoothly oiled crime committing machine.

“So should I drive the new car back or you?” Jughead asks Toni when they get out onto the lot.

“Hell, I’m not going to let you drive it period.” Which is fair, he is a notoriously bad driver, although he still insists he was much better on a motorcycle than a car, no one seems to really buy that one (and no one lets you drive a motorcycle with two kids on the back in North America).

2\. 

Veronica spots Betty in the café. She is sitting at one of the tables in the back, laptop open, fingers typing something quickly. Betty doesn’t look up until Veronica sits down across from her. 

“Hi! My meeting was over early, so I’ve been working here for a while. I already have my coffee.” Betty says, gesturing at the half empty cup besides her. 

“I just ordered at the counter.” Veronica replies, sitting down across from her.

“I didn’t see you. I was just so caught up in my work.” 

“Ah. I wish I was half that interested in my work.” 

“Wall street not as thrilling as it seems?” Betty asks with a smile. Veronica had told everyone that she was working a low-level job at an investing firm. She even had an office space set up in one as cover, though she rarely had a reason to be there. Archie was so trusting, and the Cooper-Jones's didn’t seem interested. Though this café was just around the corner from her faux-office to help support her cover story. 

She and Betty have met up a couple times now, and by focusing on talking about trivial things they have actually been able to reconnect. The only down side being that Veronica actually hadn’t learned anything new of substance about Betty. She now knew basic things like how much Betty liked sushi, running, and any book by Gillian Flynn. She has also learned a lot about the kids, that being Betty’s default topic of conversation, but she knew nothing meaningful. Even though Veronica had tried to encourage such conversations by dropping pointed hints about her own home life, Betty seemed to be uninterested. 

Still she has to try. 

Today after keeping it light for 15 minutes, Veronica can’t help but let what she is actually thinking slip out. Halfway through a conversation about soccer that is beyond dull Veronica finds herself saying “I just don’t know why you don’t like me anymore?”

Betty looks shocked and frankly Veronica feels a little shocked that she actually said it, but then before she can apologize, Betty’s green eyes meet hers in an intense stare. 

“I do like you. I just don’t trust you.” And Veronica knows those are the first honest words Betty has said to her in a decade. 

“Why not? You trust Archie.” 

“Even when Archie was in Chicago he kept in touch with us. When I was hospitalized he visited, when FP died Archie was at the funeral. Later when he moved to New York and we had an apartment warming in Riverdale he drove four hours to attend. Where were you in all that? I think you video chatted me once after you left, in the first year. I don’t know why you stopped being our friend but you did.” Betty says all this calmly. There is no hint of anger in her voice. 

Veronica didn’t know what to say. This wasn’t about Veronica being an FBI agent, this was about Veronica being a bad friend long before she was an agent. Before all this happened, once upon a time, Betty was her best friend, the best friend she had ever had. Why Betty stopped being that to her, was mostly on Veronica. She was going to have to explain that. These were the kind of conversations she tried to avoid having. Veronica takes a deep breath before she spoke. At least she could be honest about this.

“That was a long time ago, but it happened in pieces, me drifting away from our friendship. The first piece was when Archie broke up with me. I was always a bit jealous of you and Jughead, of how close you were. You could have a whole conversation without even talking. Archie and I, even at our best we weren’t like that, we still aren’t. So being single and spending time with you and Jughead was often painful for me. And when he wasn’t there, I knew you were still thinking about him, and he you.”

A softness enters Betty’s eyes that Veronica had not seen directed at her in a long time. “Oh.”

“And then there was the whole Serpent’s mess, and I know I shouldn’t bring it up because you seem so far beyond it now, but at the time it was a big deal. You were suddenly the support figure for all these people. You were always busy and often getting in to trouble, yet you acted like that was just your duty and your responsibility and I didn’t see it that way.”

Betty’s eyes don’t look as soft now, but she still seems to understand, and she nods her head. 

“When I went away to the boarding school it was like entering a different world. A whole new level of privilege, of comfort. I embraced it all, I sort of erased Riverdale from my memory for a few years, and that meant erasing you too, or trying.”

“And when you ran into Archie it all came flooding back?”

“No, not exactly. I mean” and suddenly Jughead was there, his arms wrapping around Betty’s shoulders, then he kisses her on the top of the head. Only then did he acknowledge Veronica.

“Hi.” He meets her eyes for a minute then turns back to Betty. “Sorry, I’m early but Lucy's teacher called. She’s sick, and we have to go pick her up. Nothing serious, just a cold, but she would be happier at home.”

“It’s OK.” Betty says with a nod, although Veronica really wishes she would say something else. They were finally making progress. But it is hard to dispute the sick child excuse. “I should probably go to the bathroom before we go.” Betty gets up and leaves Jughead and Veronica at the table, alone together. 

Even at the peak of her friendship with Betty, she and Jughead had not gotten along particularly well. They had tolerated each other. 

He had changed since then, though. His beanie was long gone. His body was more muscular. His eyes harder. He had added a lot of tattoos since then. He was wearing a t-shirt now and her eyes kept being drawn to the ring of black that circled his wrist. It was much thicker than any watch band, and so plain. Above the thick black band there were long blades of grass and a snake winding through them, circling his arm.

The other arm was more hodge-podge, more thrown together – there was a drawing of Pop’s diner sign, there were three flowers, the silhouette of a girl with a ponytail and a book, and the bare patch of arm where the serpent tattoo, his first tattoo had been. But out of all the tattoos it was the dark black ring that kept drawing her eye. Jughead was looking away from her during all this, staring at the washroom as if willing Betty to come out so they could go.

“What is the band about?” She asked, pointing at it. He looks surprised, and at first, she thinks he isn’t going to answer because he looks back towards the washroom. But then he speaks, his voice low and gravely. 

“Betty’s name is under there, and the kids. They were visible at first, but it felt too vulnerable for the names of the three people I love to be out there, for anyone to see. I wanted to protect them, and I liked the idea of building a brick wall over them to symbolize protection, but my tattoo artist, she suggested this instead, It’s not all black.” He flipped his wrist around so that Veronica could see the back and there were three tiny stars, one a little bigger than the other two. “I now think of it as the sky, holding only those that I love.”

“Oh.” And Veronica feels it again, full force, that jealousy that she used to feel. She knows for a fact that she’s never been loved the way Betty is. She reminds herself that this is her job. That she is here to destroy this family, to take every single star away from Jughead and make sure he never sees them again. Focusing on that thought, makes her feel surprisingly good. 

3\. 

Jughead flosses, brushes his teeth, turns off the light, and crawls into bed. His body turns on auto-pilot to spoon Betty’s, although the minute his body touches hers he knows something is wrong. She is curled up in a ball, her back against the mattress. 

Jughead switches on the bedside lamp. A warm glow reveals Betty’s arms tucked snug around her legs, her feet with perfectly polished pink toes, pressed together side by side. Her face is wet with tears, but she is no longer crying. Her eyes are closed.

“Baby, I love you. Talk to me.” Jughead was filtering through all the things he could have done to make her this upset, but nothing pops to mind. 

Betty opens her eyes. “I just can’t take it anymore. The stress of everything. Today at the salon an agent got her hair done next to mine. They are getting harder and harder to lose. They are getting more and more brazen. They must know that I know.”

“We can leave right now. I can pack up the kids things, you can book us some last minute airline tickets, and we can go. We can wake up tomorrow in Vietnam if that is the right thing to do. We have the money. We don’t need this job.” Jughead tentatively presses his hand against Betty’s knee and she uncurls.

They don’t need this job. Betty has always made good money. Even if something happened, their savings are far from insubstantial. 

“The others do. Especially Sweet Pea.” Betty says softly. Jughead knows it is true. Sweet Pea struggles to hold a low-level job for more than few months. He gets bored and restless too easily, and even now boredom leads to violence for him. “Besides I want to do this. We are so close. I want to end this part of my career on a high note.”

“I don’t know if this counts as a career.” Jughead says, his leg now slung over hers as he curls towards her. He can feel her body trembling a little, but she seems to be calming down. “If you want to do this job we can, but I want you to know that Toni and I have no problem walking away. We already have talked about it. You don’t have to decide now. You can change your mind at any time.”

Betty nods. “We really have to get to bed. It’s late.”

“Can you sleep while this tense?” Jughead asks meeting her eyes. Her body has relaxed a little now that his is right there, but he can still see the worry in her face, even in the soft glow from the lamp. 

“Probably not. Tell me something good.”

“I love you.” He kisses her neck when he says that.

“Tell me something good that I don’t know already.”

“Do you remember when we were young?”

“How young? Like diapers young?” 

Jughead laughs, he can tell she’s focusing more and more on their actual conversation and less on the fear that is building in her head.

“No, like second year of marriage young.”

“That was a decade ago.”

“I know, I was there. Anyways, you had just gotten that job with the investment firm, and we had rented that little apartment in Harlem.”

“The one that got broken into twice?” Betty whispers. 

“Yes, that one. I remember how on Sundays we would always go to Fort Tyrone park and pay one dollar each for suggested donation and visit the Cloisters. How it was so easy to imagine living in a different time and place there.” He thinks specifically about the time they visited in the winter when everything was covered by snow, how wonderful it looked. How Betty had forgotten her gloves, and they shared his pair so they could hold hands still, their other hands stuffed into their warm pockets.

“Then we would go out for coffee after, and you always insisted on getting two croissants.” Betty says this sleepily. All the tension was gone from her body now. He had gotten better at relaxing her over the years.

“Did I now?” Jughead asks, but Betty doesn’t reply. She has fallen asleep. 

4\. 

Joaquin has worked at a lot of banks now. They haven’t even robbed half of them, not even close. It has become the only job that he’s held that is respectable enough to list on his resume. Although the name at the top of his resume is Carlo Ruflo. 

Sweet Pea who has also worked at a lot of banks, but he only does it when Betty requires it for a job, he doesn’t work these jobs in between. This is mostly to do with how much he hates having to cover up the neck tattoo every single day. 

This job is just as boring as all the others. Though Joaquin isn’t a teller but an accounts manager for the first time, a promotion on paper, but a demotion in terms of how much he likes it (not at all). If he still needs to work after this next job, which in all likelihood he won’t, he will remove a couple of the positions from his resume so that he can go back to being a teller – less stress more daydreaming. 

The whole crew has day jobs, except Jughead, because frankly writing doesn’t count in Joaquin’s opinion, unless your paid for it, and Jughead largely isn’t. One of the rules after the first two years was that they don’t get to keep any of the money they steal, at least not directly. All of the money goes into a trust for the Serpents. As members of the Serpents they then get a small amount of this money back. It is more than enough to live on in Riverdale, but in New York City it is more like a stipend than anything. 

Once the FBI started poking into their business, getting close, but never close enough to catch them, Joaquin became very thankful for this indirect access to the money. It was part of what prevented them from being caught, the day jobs helped too. But Betty (Jughead might be the leader of the Serpents, but Betty is in charge of all things related to money for good reason) always promised that all the money from their last job they would be able to keep. The trust is doing well, and earning good returns through an investment firm, so they will always get a percentage of that amount as well. 

The only issue with them keeping the stolen money and actually spending it without the FBI arresting them is that they will have to leave the country. Joaquin is still unsure if he wants to do that. He is even less sure that his partner (who does not like him robbing banks one bit, thank you very much) will agree to it. 

Joaquin is looking over his client files and doing his actual job, which is all about entering information, verifying information, and trying to convince his customers to get things like additional premium service credit cards. Right now, he is reviewing the selling points for the new card they are rolling out. He is so absorbed he doesn’t realize what is going on till he hears the phrase “Tellers put your hands up. Everyone else down on the floor.” shouted loudly.

It’s not directed at him, in fact his cubicle has semi opaque walls, so they might not have even noticed him yet. Still, if they are any good at their job, they will soon, so he hits the floor like everyone else. 

This is not his first time on this end of the robbery. Betty told them all before they pulled their first job that successful bank robberies were surprisingly common place. Many banks were robbed on average between once and twice a year. If the bank robbers didn’t insist on getting into the vault and took only from the tellers, they were almost guaranteed success. At the time Joaquin was skeptical, but then one year he worked for a bank that was successfully robbed 5 times (none of those times by Joaquin). 

There is an odd sort of silence. Joaquin can make out three of the robbers, all dressed in black, from his spot on the floor. No one is talking, everyone is stiff. Joaquin wonders when the robbers will move on to the next step. Maybe they are nervous and this is their first time. If that is the case, Joaquin is on edge. First time robbers are more likely to make mistakes that hurt people. 

“This is a hold up.” One of the robbers finally yells, so they are definitely first timers then, if they think everyone on the floor of the bank has not already figured that one out. 

“Lead us to the vault.” One of the bank robbers says to a teller behind the counter, and Joaquin feels his insides flip. This is probably not going to go well for them, or for any of the people stuck in this room. Joaquin looks at where his cell phone is still up on his desk. There is no way he is going to risk going for it, besides he couldn’t call anyone who could help at this point. Having the police here is going to make things worse, not better, in terms of danger. 

The best thing that could possibly happen for the safety of everyone in the building is for everyone to comply. Still it is hard to just lay there and do nothing, even though nothing is the best thing to do. Joaquin’s been in a lot of tricky spots in his life and rarely has his heart beat so loudly. 

It seems like the tellers are complying though. One of the robbers follows one of the tellers into the long corridor that leads to the vault stairs. The other two robbers keep scanning the room, guns out and at the ready. 

“Are you OK?” Joaquin’s nearest office mate, Tara asks quietly. 

He nods then whispers back “Are you?”

“Not my first rodeo.” she says, although he can see her body shake a little. She has two kids at home, so a lot more to lose. Although Joaquin’s partner always insists that their cat is a kid, Joaquin knows better than to compare the two.

“Quiet” One of the robber’s barks at them, pointing his gun in their direction. 

Joaquin realizes he’s coated in a layer of sweat now, which feels far from pleasant. He looks at the clock on the banks wall and watches as the time passes slowly. Any minute the police could get here and everything could go south. Hell, even if it wasn’t the police, one of the hostages could get tired of this situation and try to be a hero. The longer this took, the longer it was likely to be a disaster. 

He tries to focus on the details in the marble floor, but it is too boring to distract him.

So Joaquin could not help but give an audible sigh of relief when the robber emerges from the basement with the Teller, carrying a bag that was so heavy he could barely move. 

“Let’s go” The robber shouted and the three of them head towards the exit of the building. At the very last minute one turns around and fires at the ceiling. Everyone in the room flinches, someone screams, and then the robbers were gone.

“Fucking amateurs” Tara says, loud enough for Joaquin to hear but no one else. Everyone stays on the floor for a few minutes more before their manager starts shouting “up, up,” and they finally hear police sirens. 

5\. 

Parker kicks the ball towards the goal. Someone from the opposing team intervenes, yet a minute later Parker is trying all over again. Betty is cheering madly from the sidelines, while Lucy sat beside her reading a book. 

Parker makes a goal and Betty puts her fingers to her mouth and whistles as loud as she can. Lucy looks up for a second, sees what has happened, and then starts reading again. Lucy had always refused to be involved in organized sports. A sentiment Jughead had supported completely and Betty had argued against (it’s good for kids to be active, sportsmanship is important, etc), but ultimately something that they had both supported. 

Parker at 4 practically signed himself up for soccer and softball. Betty tries to make it to all of his games, and Lucy doesn’t mind sitting outside for a few hours reading, as long as the weather is nice and they get milkshakes after. 

What surprises Betty most is how even as young as he is, Parker is the best soccer player on his team. She doesn’t think it is just her parental bias showing through either. Archie comes sometimes, and swears it too.

Betty’s cell rings with the theme song to The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, and she knows right away who is calling – Veronica. Betty is trying to avoid thinking about tomorrow and all that it will bring with it, by focusing on the here and now, but right now she has to talk to Veronica. 

She answers the phone “Hello! How are you?”

Veronica’s polished voice answers “Good! I was wondering if you were up for getting drinks tomorrow during the day. I thought you mentioned being in Manhattan tomorrow, and I have a couple hours free.”

“It’s a big day tomorrow.” Betty said. She has to be careful how she phrases this. She can’t oversell it without revealing to Veronica that she knows, but if she doesn’t mention anything at all, even with the other subtle hints they have planted, Veronica could miss stepping up and taking her role in the plan, which isn’t that important, but is helpful in its own way. “I have something scheduled I can’t get out of. Rain check?”

“Sure.” Veronica says cheerfully, and most notably she does not try and pin Betty down to a different future date.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no idea how common bank robberies are on a larger scale, but the bank in our neighborhood has been held up four times since January, so I think they can’t be that uncommon, just under publicized. It is actually part of how I came up with the idea for this fic in the first place. 
> 
> I am super grateful for all the feedback! Thank you everyone who has written comments!
> 
> Oh and I have a tumblr which I don't really use, but maybe if I had more people on it I would: https://darknessaroundus.tumblr.com/


	4. The Day Of

**1.**

  
Sweet Pea hates every single part of this assignment. He hates the room he has been stuck in for 5 hours now. He bought a glow in the dark watch for this occasion, but is trying not to check it too often for the sake of his sanity. He loathes the oxygen mask he is breathing through. His face feels sticky with sweat.

 

Sweet Pea has never thought of himself as claustrophobic but he has never before spent an extended period of time stuck in a small airless room that is entirely without light. Betty once did this for over 48 hours, and now that he has done it for a fraction of what she has he is in awe of her, even more than he was before.

 

He can’t even pace back and forth in here. It is to dark and too small for that. When he first arrived, he broke a glow stick and in the green light he packed all the high denomination cash into three black backpacks. But after that there was nothing for him to do but sit.

 

He doesn’t have his cellphone in here. There was no signal, but even if there was Betty didn’t want anyone to risk tracking. He wouldn’t have been able to watch videos on it either, just in case the sound traveled outside the vault.

 

Betty had told him he could bring a kindle on Airplane mode, but he couldn’t imagine reading a book for the first time in a decade, that was till the door closed behind him and the only thing he had to do till he got out of here was drink three bottles of water, eat two sandwiches, and five cookies. Now he just had to keep himself sane for another 12 hours. He is beginning to wish that he had watched something more uplifting than _The Shining_ last night.

**2.**

 

It starts as one those days where he wakes early, full of nervous energy. Betty has left already with a kiss. Rising when it was still dark and leaving through the backyard was how she planned to allude the FBI task force. From now till the job was complete they will have no contact. That is how it always goes for them.  He hates this part. He will spend all day thinking about what Betty is doing without actually knowing if it is going off as planned. For the last four years, Betty has been sitting the job out while he went in, but this time their roles are reversed, and he is finding it far more nerve wracking.

 

Jughead checks in on Parker and Lucy, when he sees that they are both still asleep in their respective bedrooms, he is filled with calm. Parker’s legs are dangling off his bed and Jughead repositions him, Parker remaining asleep the whole time. They don’t know that everything is about to change for them. If all goes as planned, none of them will sleep in this house ever again.

 

He goes down to the basement and does a thirty minute run on the treadmill. High-school Jughead would never have done this, but somehow in the last decade he has finally discovered the stress reliving properties of exercise.

 

Jughead is cooking breakfast when the door rings the first time. Although it is kind of an overstatement to call what he is doing cooking, He is dumping cereal in bowls, followed by milk. When it rings a third time he thinks, _wow, the Jehovah witnesses are coming around earlier this year_.  The fourth time it rings he finally heads towards the door.

 

It’s the FBI. There are three of them standing in front of the door. Even though he knew the FBI  were going to show up today he can’t stop himself from swearing. He was hoping it would be much later on, not at 7:45 AM. The kids were supposed to be gone long before this happened.

 

“Lucy, Parker, get down here!” He yells before going to answer the door. “How can I help you?” He asks, even though he already knew what was going to happen. He really hated this plan, he just didn’t realize how much till he was staring at the three FBI agents in front of him.

 

The oldest one with graying hair and a pair of silver glasses, steps forward and he asks “Are you Forsythe Jones?”

 

“Yes.” Jughead replies.

 

“You are under arrest for grand larceny.”

 

“Shit.” Jughead should probably state his innocence, but he’s not the best liar. He does think he sold the lie that he is surprised at least, because he is by the timing. Lucy and Parker are behind him now. He hates that they have to see this. He remembers seeing FP in handcuffs more than once, and it was something he would never wish on his own kids in a million years.

 

“Can I call my wife to pick them up?” He asks, even though there is no way Betty can do that. That is not part of the plan. But it would seem weird if he didn’t try her first.

 

“Sure.” the Agent says, looking a little thrown by the whole situation. He was probably not expecting the kids either. Besides it is not like they are accusing Jughead of violent crimes. In all of their years holding up bank no one has so much as broken an arm (except for Toni, that one time, and that hardly counts).

 

When Betty doesn’t answer, he asks the cop if he can call a friend instead.

 

“Sure.” the agent says with a shrug. But before he can even find Archie’s phone number, Veronica Lodge is marching up his front steps in heels.

 

“What’s going on here?” She asks sharply. Jughead is really pissed that she’s here. She is the FBI after all, and now she is pretending not to be. Although the agents don’t give any indicator that she is one of them.  They could not know. Undercover agents are usually not in communication with the rest of the team.

 

“Just a misunderstanding.” Jughead says, not meeting her eyes. “I was just about to call Archie so he could take care of the kids. I haven’t been able to reach Betty.”

 

“Hopefully Betty’s Ok?” Veronica said, stepping between Jughead and the officer and actually daring to wink at Jughead. The nerve of that women! He feels himself shake with anger. “I can take the kids to Archie.”

 

“No, I can call him.” Jughead said, pushing the dial button.

 

The cop shook his head. “That will take longer. Ms. Lodge can take them to him.”

 

Jughead was furious, but there was nothing he could do about this right now. He reaches down and hugs Parker and then Lucy. “I love you. This is just a misunderstanding, I will be back soon.”

 

“Dad, please don’t go!” Lucy says, she has tears in her eye.

 

“I don’t have a choice right now. Don’t worry. I will be back soon.” He says as the officer snaps on the cuffs and they walk him towards the two police cars. He looks back and sees Parker flailing in Veronica’s arms as she walks quickly towards her car, Lucy reluctantly following her. This was a hell of a situation. But he was sure somehow Betty would pull them through. She always has. 

 

**3.**

Veronica has to physically haul Parker into her apartment. He kicks and screams the whole way. The drive was torture. Parker yelled and Lucy asked a bunch of pointed and angry questions.

 

Veronica, of course does not call Archie. He doesn’t need to be involved in this whole mess.

 

The kids are with her now. She might have not been able to convince the Jones to trust her fully, but she was able to do it enough, to manage this. Sure, she might have felt like a glorified babysitter, but now that she has their kids, she has the power to force their hand.

 

Currently the kids are in the safety of her sound proofed apartment. Veronica knows little about kids, but she knows enough to get out a gallon of chocolate ice cream and turn on the TV. Within minutes they seem to have found something to watch. They were both quiet and glued to the TV. 

 

They look at her warily during commercial breaks, and they seem to be able to communicate with each other using minimal words and a few hand signals. She knows they don’t trust her either.

 

Veronica steps out onto the balcony and closes the door. She can still see both kids, but they can’t hear her anymore. She dials Betty on her burner phone. Betty picks up on the second ring.

 

“I have your kids, B.” Veronica says, her tone Icy.

 

“I’m glad you’ve finally dropped the act, V.”

 

“You are only going to get them back with a full confession and provided evidence.”

 

“Am I now?” Betty seemed confident when she said that, Veronica couldn’t take that confidence seriously. After all Veronica held all the cards here.

 

“I am not sure if you know this yet, but Jughead is being interrogated by the FBI right now.”

 

“This happened a little earlier than I thought. But I can work with it.” Betty replies in the same tone of voice she used to comment on the weather.

 

Veronica had expected a lot of reactions from Betty, anger for sure, surprise perhaps, but not this cold indifference.

 

“This is your family at stake. I know for Jughead that you, the kids, are his everything, is that not true for you?” Veronica asks.

 

“You know it is. I just think the option you suggested for going forward is not in my families’ best interest.”

 

Veronica is about to say something snappy in reply when she realizes that the call has ended. Betty has hung up.

 

Veronica tries calling back, instead of an answer she gets one of those automatic text messages that say “I’m busy. I will call you back later.”

 

Fuck, Veronica yells, before opening the sliding door and re-entering her apartment, both kids eyes still glued to the screen. This is not what she had expected Betty to do. Not at all.

 

This time with the FBI (and last time too, if she was being honest), Veronica had bent a fair number of rules in the pursuit of solving the case. Because she was successful last time all had been forgiven. This time she was starting to feel like she might not be so lucky.

 

Still she had the kids, and as long as she had them she was in the lead. No matter what Betty said over the phone, they were not going to leave their kids behind. Betty was probably bluffing; how could she not be? After all how were they going to even pull of the robbery today without Jughead Jones. 

 

A text comes in from Agent Smith. Except his name in her contacts isn’t Agent Smith but Jim Fox.

 

The text just says “Are the kids with you?”

 

She responds “Yes.”

 

A minute later her phone pings and when she opens it up to read it, she feels a little on edge. It says “You went off script.”

 

Which is true, but he must be writing that to make it clear that if shit comes down on them from above, it comes down on her, more than him.  

 

**4.**

The doors of First National Bank in midtown Manhattan swing open and Toni finds herself yelling the words Jughead usually utters “This is a hold up. Everyone on the floor.”

 

She feels so powerful in that moment as everyone hits the floor around her. The bank isn’t crowded yet, maybe only one or two customers, but there are seven employees that she can see. Joaquin jams the doors closed behind them so that they won’t have any last-minute visitors.

 

Since Toni is usually the driver she is not used to being on this end of things. It feels strange to be the person standing there, in charge only because she has a weapon. Her eyes scan the room looking for movement but there is none.

 

Joaquin takes over the lead. He marches up to the counter and forces one of the tellers to get up and take them downstairs. Usually they avoid the vault at all costs. The one time they almost got caught, involved the vault. But with Sweet Pea already in the vault, it should be pretty efficient.

 

Besides if this was going to be their last robbery, they wanted to walk away with a lot of cash. Toni kept her gun up and she kept looking around the room. She felt very outnumbered. They would have preferred to do the job with three robbers, but it wasn’t an option with Jug in custody and Sweets in the vault.

 

The minute Joaquin left the room Toni felt vulnerable and outnumbered. She couldn’t help but hope that he would be back quickly with Sweet Pea.

 

_5._

 Agent Smith had been looking forward to questioning Jughead Jones for a long time. But because of the nature of their investigation, he had been forced to stay in the shadows, to not intrude, until now.

 

It was strange standing across from the man he had watched for many hours on security feed. He seemed shorter in real life. Less dynamic. Right now Jughead Jones was handcuffed to a table, so that could be why.

 

Smith was currently watching him through the two way mirror, which meant he could not be seen. Jughead hadn’t spoken much since he got there, he had not even asked for a phone call. The arresting agents said that he was silent the whole way over. They also mentioned that he was initially surprised by the situation. Now he seemed bored more than anything else. His upper body was slightly slumped, but his legs sprawled out under the table.

 

Smith took a deep breath and entered the room. Jughead looked up at him.

 

“Good morning, Jughead.”

 

“It has not been a particularly good one.”

 

“I am Agent Smith.”

 

“Nice to finally meet you.” Jughead says. Smith is surprised by that. He didn’t expect Jughead to admit that he knew about the surveillance his family had been under.

 

“I could say the same.”

 

“You gave my wife a lot of sleepless nights.”

 

“I have some questions for you.”

 

“Ask away.”

 

Agent Smith knows from Jughead’s file, that he has been questioned before, on numerous occasions, for numerous reasons, even if that was a decade ago, he has lots of practice in this context. People who have lots of practice in this context tend to break down into two categories: Those who favor silence and those who favor quips. Jughead seems to be the latter.

 

“What were you planning to do today?”

 

“Drop the kids off at school. Work on some writing. Maybe get a cup of coffee out. You know, exciting things.”

 

“Drop the suburban dad, schtick. I know who you are.”

 

Jughead laughed “Then you would know I am a suburban dad. Or do you think I pay actors to play my children? That would be an interesting scheme. Not sure what my motives would be.”

 

Smith took a deep breath after his verbal mis-step. He had expected Jughead to be more on edge, to be eager to leave this room and get out of here. After all today is the day of the planned robbery and here he is unable to be involved, when usually he was (they thought) the man yelling “everyone down” into a room full of people. Yet Jughead doesn’t seem to mind being trapped here particularly.

 

“Where is Betty?”

 

“I am not my wife’s keeper.” But Smith can see his body tense. If he has a weakness, it’s his wife. Veronica has already told them this much. Maybe one of the few useful things she ended up doing. Smith is still reeling over the fact that she took the children. If he knew she was going to try that, he would have told the arresting agents about her, to prevent it from happening.

 

“Where were you on February 14th, 2021”

 

“I am not sure.” Jughead looks genuinely confused by this question. “Probably with Betty. We try not to go out to dinner that day, so maybe a meal at home.”

 

Smith smiles. He guesses Jughead forgot exactly what he was doing on that day, after so many robberies they probably all blend together. Smith places a manila folder on the table and spreads it open. He expects an exhale or a tell of something. Instead Jughead’s expression is completely blank.

 

In front of him there are time stamped video surveillance photos of a hold-up in in lower Manhattan.  It happened right before the bank closed on February 14th, 2021. There are 3 people with guns, if you look closely one appears to be a women. Most of the photos are from the video feed. They are black and white, grainy, with details that are hard to make out.

 

Three of the photos are different. They were taken outside, and are in full color, they are time stamped a few minutes later and the location is right around the bank. Jughead features prominently and identifiabley in the last one. He even looks at the camera. His hair is shorter in the shot, but otherwise nothing much has changed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am always so grateful for feedback!


	5. Exit, Pursued By A Bear

 

**1.**

Veronica cannot get over how terrible children’s television is. The kids have been watching nothing but horrible cartoons all morning. She puts headphones on to try and drown out the squeaky voices of the animated dogs, hamsters, and fairies. Still she swears they are giving her a headache.

 

Veronica should have thought this plan through more before pursuing it. She keeps trying to concentrate on the email on her laptop, but there is too much going on for that.

 

The kids are not talking to each other on the sofa, they are so focused on the flashing lights of the TV in front of them.

 

The door buzzer rings. Veronica looks at the video feed on her phone and can see Archie out on the front steps of the building pushing the buzzer. She can ignore him. There is no way he knows that she’s in here.

 

He keeps looking at the video camera, his eyes focused on it, as if he can see her watching on the other end.

 

She doesn’t know how he found her apartment in the first place. She had made sure that whenever they went home together, it was to his apartment. She had never asked him to pick her up and he had never dropped her off here. He had teased her a bit about it, actually.

 

Still it didn’t matter, he had found it. After Arche has buzzed for five minutes straight, he stops. A minute later Veronica gets a phone call from Archie. Three missed calls later, she has to admit that she is a little surprised that he is this persistent. It almost seems like he knows she is here.

 

In a panic, she wonders if he knows that the Jones-Cooper children are here. But she calms herself down – there is no rational way he can know that.

Even if he did, he hasn’t got a clue that the Jones-Cooper’s do in terms of criminal activity (she had probed him about such things when they had first started dating, and it had been abundantly clear that he hadn’t a clue). So if he did make it in here, she would likely be able to sway him to her side using that information. After all Archie was still the All American boy next door.

 

**2.**

 

Agent Smith lets Jughead look over the pictures. Jughead is most concerned with the pictures of himself. He keeps turning one of them over, as if the secret is on the other side. It is blank though.

 

“What am I looking at?” Jughead asks. Betty arranged this part, and she thought it best that he didn’t know. She wanted him to honestly look surprised, and he was very honestly surprised, one could even say shocked. He didn’t remember this robbery at all but it certainly looked an awful lot like he committed it.

 

Agent Smith walks him through the location, tells him the banks name, and makes it clear which pieces fit where. The pictures tell a compelling story. A TD bank was robbed, and Jughead was spotted two intersections over, 5 minutes later.

 

All of this supposedly happened a few years ago and as much as he racks his brain, he can’t seem to remember it. They had definitely robbed a TD bank before (more than once), but not one in that part of town, and not on a Valentine’s day (as much as Jughead hates the idea that the greeting card industry created that holiday, he loves Betty, and Betty loves Valentine’s day).

 

“So.” Jughead says with a shrug. “This is circumstantial evidence.”

 

“I am not sure a jury will see it that way.” Agent Smith says confidently. He might very well be right. “If you tell me about this robbery, if you co-operate, we might be able to arrange a lighter sentence.”

 

Jughead sincerely doubted that “Honestly I can’t remember this robbery at all.”

 

Agent Smith shakes his head “I’m going to give you 15 minutes to think this over and when I return, you should be ready to confess.” With that the Agent leaves.

 

Jughead flips the bird towards the two way mirror, just to get rid of some of his anxious energy. He really hopes this plan, whatever it is, will work, because he can't handle being in enclosed space for very long

 

**3.**

 

Betty’s hair is covered with a brown wig, her face is uncomfortably aged up by two decades. When she checks her face in the car mirror she surprises herself.

 

She hasn’t been this anxious since high school. The plan this time is a little more free form than expected, more than she ever wanted to be, but they are rolling with it

 

Betty hadn’t foreseen a lot of what was going to happen, Veronica taking the kids was the biggest move she hadn’t expected, but she had a plan for that, not to mention a 30 year old ace up her sleeve, to ensure it all worked out.

 

Betty glances across the street again at the bank. From outside it is still quiet. No one has even tried the door and found it shut. If she didn’t know better she would assume it was a normal business day in there.

 

So far Toni and Joaquin had been inside for five minutes. Another two minutes and they would be officially late. She hoped that wouldn’t be the case. One of the keys to being successful was being timely, her mother used to say that all the time in a very different context.

 

The doors to the bank swung open, and Sweet Pea, Joaquin, and Toni flew out, all of their faces masked.  They ran across the street. It was a good thing traffic wasn’t bad yet. They jammed into the back seat and Betty pressed down on the gas, but not too fast. If they were really lucky they would just blend in with the other cars. The windows in the car were deeply tinted, and all three took off there masks.

 

Betty turned the block and pulled onto Fifth Avenue and into the stream of traffic. Maybe it would be this easy. Maybe they would just blend in.

 

“How are you guys doing?”

 

“I went fucking crazy.” Sweet Pea says. “I started to think the world outside was a fantasy. I almost kissed Joaquin when I saw him.” Betty could still see where the oxygen mask had been. It had left marks on his skin.

 

“Kevin would not approve.” Betty said with a smile on her face.

 

“That is what I told him.” Joaquin said, “When we opened the vault and Sweet Pea jumped out, the teller that walked me down there, fainted.”

 

“That’s a first.” Betty said. The traffic around them has slowed to the point where no one is really moving. As far as getaways go, this isn’t a very fast one. At this rate they will be averaging 5 minutes a block.

 

“And a last.” Toni adds, a giant grin on her face. “That was our last job, guys.”

 

Betty wants to feel the joy Toni feels about it, and she might soon, but right now the kids are first and foremost on her mind. But she doesn’t want to burden the rest of the team with that reality, particularly because there is nothing they can do at this point.

 

She hears the distinctive whine of a police siren. It might not be for them, but the odds are that it is.

 

“Ok, everyone change.” She says and the back-seat dissolves into a mad scramble as everyone pulls off their dark layers to reveal bright ones. Toni takes off the blond wig she is wearing to reveal her normal pink hair. They throw all of the items into a black duffel bag that Sweet Pea hoists onto his lap.

 

“Sweet Pea out first. – Now.” Betty barks, even though she can’t see the police car yet, or even its light. They are moving so slowly Sweet Pea is able to exit and disappear into the crowd on the sidewalk within seconds. He’s moving slowly though, between the back pack and the duffel bag he has a lot to carry. But he’s only a few blocks from Grand Central, so he should be fine.

 

Betty waits another minute before saying “Joaquin, now.” and he exits without a word or a backwards glance. The traffic starts to pick up again, so she waits till the next stop light before saying “Toni, go.” She can see the flashing lights of two cop cars now, but they are still a block and a half back.

 

Toni yells an “I love you.” as she exits, and Betty blows a kiss. Now at least if the cops stop her, they won’t find the robbers, the money, or even their clothes in the backseat.

 

She drives another block and the traffic has lessened enough for her to make a right turn and then a left. She can hear the sirens clearer now. She drives straight for two long blocks and she can clearly see both cop cars, following her, only about a block behind. It probably would have been wiser if she had kept it slow and steady, without picking up speed, they might not have picked her out of the crowd. Still if she waited too long before making a run for it, her chances of success were next to none.

 

She turns left and then right, then as planned she turns into a parking garage. There are two on this street, as well as an alley, so they can’t assume where she has gone. Since there are two cop cars their options are severely limited. Still her heart is beating in her head, and she finds it hard to breath.

 

She parks the car in the reserved section, it should be towed away by trucks before the end of the day, and she walks away. There is no need to wipe anything down because she was wearing leather gloves this whole time (they seemed less creepy than surgical gloves, even though they are far from weather appropriate). 

 

She can hear sirens now but she can’t see anything. She is only one level down in the parking garage, so they could just be on the street, but still she runs up the steps as fast as she can. When she reaches the busy lobby of the office building she takes off her gloves and stashes them in her purse, before walking down into the subway.

 

At the entrance, there is a cop and the pounding in her head only gets louder. She has to resist clenching her hands into fists and piercing skin. She forces her body forward, she tries to look as normal as possible. In her simple gray suit dress she knows she blends in with the crowds. She focuses on this as she walks straight past the cop and down the stairs and onto the subway. It isn’t till 5 stops later that she allows her body to relax a little. Her muscles slowly loosening and her breathing returns to normal.

 

**4.**

 

Veronica ignores call after call from Archie. She turned the ringer off after the first round so as not to alarm the kids, but she doesn’t want to block him outright, that would be admitting that she had seen his calls in the first place.

 

She can’t keep him at bay forever, but she can’t call the FBI for backup either because what she did was illegal. She feels trapped by the situation, her head full of thoughts, but none of them helpful.

 

Finally, there is a few minutes of peace where no calls come in. Veronica boils water so that she can make coffee in the French press. Archie must have finally given up, she thinks, glancing over at the kids. Parker looks half asleep, his sandy head on Lucy’s lap. That is when someone knocks on the front door to her apartment. Veronica stands up. Could it be Archie? Had someone let him into the building?

 

Before she can decide on the next step to take, Lucy has the door open and is in Archie’s arms, Parker following.

 

“Veronica, what is going on here?” Archie asks over both the kids heads.

 

“Jughead was arrested.” Veronica hopes that by keeping it is a brief as possible she will avoid incriminating herself. Still she suspects he knows something.

 

“OK. I am taking the kids.” It surprises Veronica that Archie isn’t shocked by Jughead’s arrest. He doesn’t even seem to be curious. He also seems to be particularly tight lipped given the circumstances. She assumed he would have a lot of questions for her.

 

“Why can’t we just take care of them together.” Veronica says softly, after all she can’t assume that he knows what she is up to. There is a very small chance that he doesn’t really know what is going on. That someone sent him here without context.

 

“That wouldn’t make Jughead happy.” Archie says, shaking his head. The kids are now standing on either side of him, his large hands holding theirs.

 

“Jughead is a criminal. Betty too for that matter.” Veronica said, spitting their names out of her mouth like they were cherry pits.

 

Archie shrugs, as if he could care less. This surprises Veronica, after all she was pretty sure he didn’t know they were before today.

 

Veronica knew high school Archie better, but this Archie and she had been dating for months. He was still pretty soft, the kind of guy who cried in sad movies, and gave money to panhandlers. He didn’t have the hardness that Betty and Jughead has acquired like a second layer of skin. If anything, his work with children, his love of children had made him even more easy going than he was in high school. Yet here he was looking completely unconcerned that his best friends were criminals.

 

“It looks an awful lot like you’re a criminal too.” Archie says, nodding towards Parker and then Lucy as he says that.

 

“I am with the FBI actually.” Veronica gets her badge out, because if there was ever a time to use it, this was it. “If you take them, you will be a criminal too.”

 

Archie laughs lightly. He looks a whole lot less stressed by this situation than she does. “I know you are FBI. Is that is why you started dating me?”

 

“No. I mean that was just part of it.” Veronica said.

 

Archie looks down at the children before replying without meeting her eyes. “It doesn’t matter. We will be going now.”

 

“No!” Veronica shouts. She has her gun in her holster. She could take it out right now and stop this from happening. But if everything went south, things would be way worse if she forced them to stay. There would be no staying with the FBI after that. She probably would go to prison, which was so far from her goal it wasn’t funny.

 

“Are you going to stop us?” Archie asks, his eyes meeting hers, his voice firm.

 

“How did you know we were here?” Veronica asks. She can’t stop him, but she can stall her.

 

“Betty. She put a tracker in your purse. When you and I first started dating she handed me an envelope with your name on it, and told me to only open it in the case of an emergency. Last night she told me to open it.”

 

“And?”

 

“I’ve already burnt the contents. It told me everything that Jughead and Betty have been up to the last decade or so, and it told me that you were FBI, that you were instrumental in bringing your parents down – congratulations on that, by the way. It also told me that Betty might need my help, but she wanted me to know everything before I offered it.”

 

“You still chose them?”

 

“I did. They are good people Veronica. Have you been back to Riverdale in the past decade?”

 

“No.” Veronica has no desire to go back there. If she could remove the memory of her years there, she would, particularly now that the last good part of them has turned against her.

 

“You would be surprised. The crime rates way down. The town is prosperous and far from divided.”

 

“And Jughead and Betty played a role in that?”

 

 **“Of** course they did.” With that Archie opened the door and the kids walked through and then he did.

 

Veronica fights the urge to follow them, or to at least scream something, but instead she collapses on the couch. Fifteen minutes later she receives a text from Archie that says: **It probably goes without saying, but we are over.**

She doesn’t know why it frustrates her so much, but maybe after all that, she should at least get the satisfaction of breaking up with him.

 

**5.**

Jughead is getting anxious. He’s more worried for Betty than himself. He has no idea how things are going out there. She could have been successful, or she could be in a room very similar to this one right now. Either way by this time the bank robbery itself should be long over.

Agent Smith left about an hour ago and hasn’t come back since. Jughead might not have liked having to spend time with him, but it might be worse, stuck in a room on your own with nothing to do but worry. And he had a lot he could worry about, with both Betty and the kids in precarious situations.

  
The door reopened. This time it was Agent Smith, but a taller strange man with brown hair.

 

“I am Agent Ryan.” Jughead didn’t bother introducing himself. Obviously, Agent Ryan knew who he was, given the current situation.

 

“Where is Agent Smith?” Jughead asks. Maybe this is a policy of the FBI’s to switch out agents partway through interrogations. It doesn’t make sense to Jughead but bureaucracy generally don’t.

 

Agent Ryan blushes, and that really surprises Jughead. He’s pretty sure Agents aren’t supposed to blush. “He has been relieved of his duty.”

 

“Oh.” Jughead’s day is already looking up. Agent Ryan fishes keys out of his pocket and unlocks Jughead’s handcuffs.

 

“You are free to go.”

 

“Can I ask why?” Jughead is aware that he shouldn’t be pushing his luck. This isn’t the first time he’s been brought in for questioning. But he was expecting this form of torture to extend for at least a couple more hours. He doesn’t expect to be getting off this easily.

 

“The photographic evidence Agent Smith had against you was incomplete. That bank robbery wasn’t committed by you. It was a coincidence that the CCTV cameras caught you nearby. The photos Agent Smith received turned out to be highly selective. He should have looked into it more. You were there with your whole family, the kids included.”

 

“I knew that.” Although in fact he didn't. He still couldn't remember this day. It blended in with all the other ones.

 

“Your lawyer brought the additional photos, as well as information about the actual gang that had perpetrated the crime.”

 

“My lawyer?” Jughead is a little surprised. He knows the evidence regarding the other gang (and the CCTV footage) must all be Betty’s work, but no one had ever mentioned a lawyer.

 

“Kevin Keller.” Of course. Kevin might not approve of Joaquin’s career choice (and he might specifically blame Jughead for that choice), but he still loved Joaquin and Betty.

 

“Yes.” Agent Ryan frankly looked a little fed up by this point. “Are you going to keep interrogating me, or are you going to go enjoy your freedom?”

 

Jughead nods and follows Agent Ryan out of the room.

 

“We still do have evidence on you, you know?” Agent Ryan says right before handing him off to Kevin (who looked rather annoyed by the whole situation).

 

“I do. I also know you don’t have enough to keep me.” Jughead said.

 

“You can’t get away with doing this forever.” Agent Ryan said with a shake of his head.

 

“Don’t I know it.” Jughead mumbled, mostly for his own benefit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter to go! Thanks to everyone who has stuck with me so far, and an extra big thank you to everyone who has commented.
> 
> Oh and I have a Tumbler that I don't use very much, but I am starting to use more: https://darknessaroundus.tumblr.com/


	6. The Great Unknown

**Toronto, Canada – 5 months post robbery**

Joaquin is exhausted from work and the weather. The winter winds are in full force near their condo building, and he is pretty sure that half of his skin has been removed by the sheer power of it.

 

Yet he makes it inside and up to their still anonymous looking condo, and Kevin is cooking in the kitchen and singing along to the music he is blasting.

 

They didn’t even have to leave the states. Joaquin hasn’t spent a cent of the money yet (but it is nice to have it – he even did the super villain thing, and rolled in it), but Kevin got a good job offer, and Joaquin can be a teller anywhere, and so they moved.

 

Joaquin loves the way Toronto is vibrant and in flux, less polished than New York, but more sprawling. He loathes the winter weather. Every one of his co-workers have told him that NYC is just as bad, but he’s lived in both places now, and so his opinion is the only honest one.

 

Joaquin puts away his gloves and scarf and toque (he’s been informed that in Canada there is no such thing as beanies), he takes off his coat and hangs it up. Kevin still hasn’t heard him, that’s how into the music he is. Joaquin shakes his head and he can’t stop himself from sneaking up on Kevin and covering his eyes.

 

Which was a mistake because Kevin was stirring pasta sauce, and in shock he throws up his hand holding the spatula and the very hot sauce gets all over both of them. After a lot of apologizing (on Joaquin’s part) both of them manage to laugh about it. Although Joaquin makes a mental note not to try that particular move in the kitchen again.

**Saigon, Vietnam – 9 months post robbery**

“Can I get another beer?” The tourist sitting on the table nearest the bar asks, and Sweet Pea nods and goes back to the tap to pour another mango IPA.

 

He hands it to the man then wipes the bar down. It is almost closing time. It’s been dark out for two hours now, yet the air is still full of heat and humidity.  

 

When Sweet Pea first arrived in Vietnam, the idea was just to stay for a month, drive around the country, get drunk, see the sights, have fun. He had done this in Thailand and Mexico and it had panned out pretty well. Toni had been with him for part of Thailand before she flew off to India.

 

Two weeks into exploring Vietnam, Sweet Pea got restless, lonely. He drove back to Saigon, booked a ticket to India (he had made so much fun of Toni a few months earlier and here he was doing the exact same thing). That was when he met Bian, in this very bar.

 

Two of the other patrons had gotten drunk, and belligerent, and Bian stepped between them even though she was half their size and asked if they would please leave. She actually said please. It didn’t help the situation much, so Sweet Pea (over a head taller than everyone else involved) intervened.

 

Bian gave him a free beer for his troubles, and just like that he canceled his flight. They hadn’t even made plans and he had canceled his flight, that’s how much he liked her. So, he kept going back to the bar, he even got a job there, and just when he had worked up the courage to ask her out, she kissed him, during a shift no less.

 

He had never met anyone braver, or more stubborn. That was six months ago now. In NYC he had failed at both holding down a job and dating anyone for more than two nights and here he had managed both happily. And he didn’t even need the job. He was beginning to understand the whole monogamy thing. Not that he was about to admit it to Jughead (not after all these years).

 

Bian entered from the back, where the actual brewing happened, and she placed a hand on his side.

 

“How’s it going?” She asks. Her accent making all the words sound shorter than they really were.

 

“Good. You can see we only have three customers.” Sweet Pea gestures out at the bar floor. It’s not a big room but two hours ago it was packed, and now one of their few customers was sleeping on the table.

 

“Last call.” Bian shouts.

 

The tourist finishes up his drink and throws some money down. The other two men, both regulars who had already paid, just left.

 

Sweet Pea turns off the music that has been driving him nuts all night, off. Then he closes up the long row of doors opening onto the patio.

 

“Do you ever miss it?” Bian asks.

 

“Miss what?”

 

“New York. America. Home?”

 

Sweet Pea had to think about it for a second. There were certainly things that he missed about New York. There was a reason musicians had written so many songs about it. He loved the people watching, he loved walking from one side of the city to the other. He missed the diners and having breakfast of eggs and bacon at 3 AM with his friends. He has grown to like hot soup for breakfast, but it isn’t the same.

 

There were arguments for the states as a whole too. But what he missed most were people. He’d lived all of his adult life with Jughead, Joaquin, Toni, and Betty. Seeing them all at least once a week. Sharing meals with them, watching movies, and drinking. Not to mention working.  He taken them for granted. He complained about them regularly, to their faces and behind their back. But he missed them terribly right now.

 

When you really knew somebody, or in his case, a whole group of somebodies, your shared history was always there, below the surface, ready to make everything better (or occasionally worse). You didn’t have to speak in full sentences half the time, or explain jokes. He didn’t realize how much he took that for granted till now.  

 

If he was lucky he would get that with Bian, but that would take them years to build towards. But even if he could go back to NYC (if legal factors weren’t an issue, and they may not be), the people he loves aren’t there anymore. Not one of them. They have plans to re-unite, but they are just temporary, a sort of strange extended vacation.

 

“A bit. Mostly I miss friends. Why?”

 

“You never talk about home. Or friends. ”

 

“Hey, I’ve got friends.”

 

Bian laughs. “Do you have family?”. Bian has lots of family, he’s met 4 sisters and there are 2 brothers, somewhere, and so many nieces and nephews and in-laws he has entirely lost count of them (not to mention the cousins, there are a shit-ton of cousins).

 

Sweet Pea’s dad is long gone, and his mom who he did love is dead. He is sure he has a cousin or three out there in the world but he’s never met them. He has told Bian about his mother, but the rest doesn’t seem worth going into. “The friends I miss, they were family.”

 

“So I will meet them some day?” She asks.

 

“Oh yeah.” He says. He feels like he is missing some sort of important subtext.

 

“So you are serious about me?” Bian surprises him sometimes. She is a big fan of direct questions and making honest statements (the whole culture here is – he’s never heard so many opinions about his appearance in his life).

 

But he thought she already knew the answer to this one. He thinks he’s been pretty damn obvious about it.

 

“Hell yes. I’ve never been this kind of serious in my life.”

 

“Good.” She says with a smirk that he just has to cover with his lips.  

**Delhi, India – 10 months post robbery**

Archie scans the crowded arrivals section of the airport. He had just gotten off his flight and was both woozy with exhaustion and stir crazy. Sitting that long was just un-natural.

 

He didn’t really know who or what he was looking for in the airport, so he scanned the crowd and read all the signs that people were holding up, till finally a loud whistle caught his attention. He looked towards the sound and saw a tall older women with blond hair waving at him. Alice Cooper was a long way from home, but she still wore the same outfits she had worn as a small town parent.

 

Yet it was clear pretty quickly that she had acclimatized to the local culture, weaving them expertly through the airport and into a car. She wasn’t driving though, she claimed that it was too much for her nerves. All she would tell him in the airport was that they were going outside of the city.

 

Archie’s only experience of Delhi ended up being driven through it. The traffic and the mad dashes of pedestrians were too much for his nerves. The smell too was overwhelming. Archie had never left the states before so everything was new. Even the layover in Paris (where he hadn’t even had time to leave the airport) was a lot to handle.

 

“Where are we headed?” He asked Alice, now that they were in the relative privacy of the car he was pretty sure she would tell him. He still felt guarded around her. Though clearly Betty and Jughead had trusted her enough for her to be there.

 

“To Woodstock.”

 

Archie felt confused. The Woodstock he knew was in upstate New York. Alice answered his unasked question.

 

“It’s a school in Landour, in the mountains. A prestigious school, mixed boarding and local kids. Elizabeth and J bought a house nearby. The kids are attending it as day students. It is a couple days travel from here, but we will take breaks.”

 

“Elizabeth and J?”

 

Alice shrugged. “That is what they are going by now.”

 

“That will be an adjustment.” Archie said with a shrug.

 

Alice laughed “Tell me about it. And to think I wanted her to go by Elizabeth in the first place.”

 

“So how are they? I see them over messenger all the time, but they can never go into details of course.”

 

“Good. They actually love it here. Elizabeth’s gotten really into motorcycles too and they spend a lot of time on trails in the mountain on them. I think they got a bike for you, if you want to join them.”

 

“And the kids?”

 

“They love the school. They are doing well here. I never thought I’d say this but it’s been an easy adjustment.”

 

“Even for you?” Archie asked. He doesn’t know what Alice has been doing the last few years, but he can’t imagine that it was anything like her life here.

 

“Elizabeth and J let me in now, far more than before. I get to see Parker and Lucy most days and the twins are planning to enroll as boarders next year.”

 

Archie smiles. He’s been nervous about this trip ever since he received the ticket in the mail. It wasn’t accompanied by a card or a note, just with a tiny picture of a treehouse sketched on the inside of the envelope. Not just any treehouse, the one he had grown up with.

 

Even over messenger they hadn’t talked about the ticket. But they must have assumed he was going to use it because Alice had been there at the airport waiting for him (after a far from short commute).

 

“How long are you staying?” Alice asked

 

“I don’t know. They didn’t send me a return ticket.”

 

“They’ll buy one for any date you want.”

 

“I’ll probably stay the whole summer than. School doesn’t start till the second week of September.”

 

“That will make everyone happy.” Alice says with an approving nod. “How have you been?”

 

“Ok.” Archie thinks that is the right word to describe the monotony of his everyday life right now. He missed the Joneses, they had left spots empty in his weekly routine, and while he had other friends, their relationships were far more surface level.

 

“I heard about what happened with Veronica. I am very grateful that you rescued Parker and Lucy from her. Thank you.” Alice met his eyes when she said this, and he could tell how much she meant it.

 

“Of course.” When he had read the file Betty had left him back in early October, the one that detailed Jughead and Betty’s criminal identities and Veronica’s true employer, he had known right away what he was supposed to do. He assumed he might feel different later, conflicted or guilty maybe.  After all he had been falling in love with Veronica. But it turns out that being betrayed by someone to that degree, being in what for all intents and purposes was a fake relationship for one of the involved parties, made it a whole lot easier to fall out of love and into anger.

 

He supposed that the whole situation only added to his trust issues. He had not dated seriously since then. But he never once debated the morality of what he had done. Archie had sided with his family, and in retrospect it had seemed absurd to him that Veronica had imagined any reality where he would not.

 

**Sienna, Italy – 10 Months Post Robbery**

Toni is walking home from the market when she sees a blond ponytail. She actually sets down her bags in preparation to greet Betty, when the women turns around and is revealed to be nothing more than a teenage tourist in a summer dress.

 

She had done the same thing two weeks ago with a small child that resembled Parker so much it was almost impossible for her to believe that he wasn’t Parker. She went straight home and video chatted with the kids, only then realizing that the child on the street resembled last year’s Parker, not the bigger more athletic version that existed now.

           

Toni picks up her grocery bags and continues on her way home, through the Plaza and up the steep stone path.

 

She’s already been to India once since Betty and Jughead relocated there, but six months seems too long ago now. Betty had made it clear that she could come anytime, that she could move there if she liked, but Toni had fallen in love with Italy. Not with anyone in particular in Italy (although that would be nice), but with the way Tuscany was so easy going, so charming.

 

Toni will always be an outsider here, she doesn’t look like the locals (something they occasionally make abundantly clear to her), she doesn’t live in a house that has been owned by generations of her family, she doesn’t have a contrada she belongs to. But she does have a house a little outside the city walls with a small pool and a dog to call her own.

 

She takes photos every day. Everyone goes on and on about how beautiful Tuscany is in the summer, and it is beautiful, but some of her favorite days were in the winter, even with the chill in the air. She would make a fire in the fireplace, and go for a walk or a ride (she has grown to love her Vespa even if it lacked the speed she was accustomed to) through the empty countryside.

 

It was spring, almost summer now, and with the weather came tourists. She hadn’t spent a summer here yet, but all the locals talked about them as if they were a necessary plague.

 

As she starts to walk outside the city walls she admires the view of the valley below her. Even though she has taken this photo a hundred times before she can’t help setting down her bags, fishing out her camera, and taking another.

 

This is what she’s known for now - photography, not violence, not robbery, not drama. She wonders what her teenage self would say. Probably just roll her eyes and dismiss the current version of Toni as boring. If only she could tell her teenage self how happy she would be.

**Springfield, Illinois - 10 months post Robbery**

Veronica sat at her desk in her tiny cubicle in the basement of the FBI offices in Springfield. Prior to her reassignment here she had 1) never done desk duty, 2) never knew there was an FBI office in Springfield Illinois, and 3. never spent so much time in a basement.

Now her life circled around her small apartment, a bar that didn't really believe in wine, and this room, surrounded by pale co-workers who did not like interacting with her (she had made the mistake of name dropping the wrong name on the first day of work). 

Sometimes at night when depression was closing in on her, she reminded herself that things could be much worse - she wouldn't have been able to handle the life that Agent Smith had now (yes, she had heard the rumors but she had seen the reality, and the reality was much worse).

She tries not to think about how bad things would have been if Archie had not relieved her of the kids. Her fate would certainly have been worse than Agents Smiths.

**Landour, India – 10 months post Robbery**

Betty is making cookies in the kitchen when the kids come home from school, bags flying, uniforms rumpled.

           

“I thought you had football?” Betty asks Parker as he hugs her.

 

“I wanted to hang out with Uncle Archie.”

 

“Me too!” Lucy says, scanning the living room and the verandah as if he was hiding here, somewhere.

 

“He is going to be here for almost three months, there will be plenty of time to spend with him. You spent most of the past two days with him.”

 

“Where is he?” Parker demanded.

           

“And when will the cookies be done?” Lucy added. Betty had already mixed all the ingredients, all that was left to do was to roll the individual cookies and place them on the tray.

 

“Archie is out with your dad on the bikes, and twenty-five minutes for the cookies.” Betty answered. She broke off a section of the dough and rolled it into a ball, before placing it on the wax paper lining the tray.

 

“Can we play video games while we wait?” Lucy asks. Betty doesn’t want to reward Parker for skipping practice, but the kids have not used up their screen time this week, so there is no real point in stopping them.

 

“Sure.” She says and they exit the kitchen and lay down on the floor of the family room, came controllers in hand.

 

They are all excited to have Archie visiting. They’ve actually adapted well to the move and have had an easy time making new friends, mostly with the teachers and other parents at school. Life here is much more low key, and the kids walk to school with friends most days.

 

Betty is working again, she sold her own company (she didn’t want to be tied down to those hours, and she was worried that it might get caught up with legal issues post robbery) and was working long distance for the second largest investment firm in the world.

 

She places the cookies in the oven and sets a timer. Archie has struggled a little with acclimatizing to the local food, and she is hoping that this taste of home will help. After all these are the same cookies she grew up making for him.

 

Jughead and Archie enter through the front door, both dirt covered and grinning.

 

“Outer layers off” Betty shouts. Both men pull of their jackets and the cover up pants they are wearing, then take off their shoes. “How was the ride?”

 

“Great. I think I might have to buy myself a bike when I get home.” Archie says smiling, and Betty mentally makes a note to buy him one. If she ships it to Fred’s it could even be waiting for him when he gets home. “I can see why you guys love it here.”

 

“As long as you steer clear of the monkeys.” Parker says. Both kids have abandoned their controllers and are standing in front of Archie now.

 

“Yes. They can be dangerous.” Lucy says. “They only look cute.”

 

“Noted.” Archie says with a nod. “Do I smell cookies?”

 

“They are in the oven right now.” Betty says.

 

Jughead comes over and picks her up from the waist in a snug hug and whispers “I love you Baby.” in her ear.

 

This is the first time in their life together that they have had very few outside stressors. No other gangs haunting them, no government agencies surveilling them. She had actually worried that without the outside pressure their relationship might shift and somehow lessen. After all they had always been forced to rely on each other to a degree that outsiders couldn’t understand. Yet here they were, happier than they’d ever been.

 

“I love you too.” she said turning around so that she was facing him so that they could kiss.

 

“Yuck.” said Lucy.

 

“Please stop.” said Parker.

 

Betty laughs and pulls her mouth away from Jugheads, although his arms remain around her body.

 

“Wasn’t it nice before they could talk?” Betty whispered to him. He laughs lightly into her ear.

 

“We can hear you!” Lucy is indignant.

 

“Do you want to play with us?” Parker asks Archie, gesturing towards the abandoned screen.

 

“After I eat cookies.” Archie says. “I have priorities.”

 

“Five more minutes.” Betty remarks. “It is so good to have you here.”

 

“As good as it is to be here, it’s also weird.”

 

“Weird how?” Jughead asks.

 

“I don’t know how to explain it, exactly.” Archie pauses “But not that long ago you guys were in a big house in Westchester and you seemed so established there, I never thought you would leave, and now you seem the same way here, except this is a strange country, with a foreign language.”

 

“Actually most people speak English.” Lucy interjects.

 

“Yes, but there are all sorts of different customs and food. But you guys just seem to have found a way to make it home. I don’t even think you miss it.”

 

“School here is much better.” Parker says.

 

“So much better!” Lucy adds. “The kids are actually interesting. I have real friends.” That almost makes Betty laugh, as if the friends Lucy had back home were fake, when they weren’t. They just had different priorities. In New York kids seemed to grow up a lot faster than here. This speed seemed more natural for her kids. “I miss going to Broadway shows sometimes. I miss the city.”

 

“I miss beef.” Parker says with a sigh.

 

“I miss it more.” adds Jughead. “I dream about hamburgers every night.”

 

“Priorities.” Betty says, rolling her eyes. “We miss you Archie, and people. But here works too. It’s a whole different adventure.”

 

“Do you ever miss what you did there?” Archie asks. Betty can tell that he’s asking about the bank robbing and not the company running.

 

“Sometimes.” She says

 

“A lot.” Jughead adds.

 

“Do you think you might do it again?” Archie asks.

 

“Maybe once the kids are in college.” Jughead says.

 

“Are you guys talking about robbing banks again?” Lucy asks.

 

A surprised expression covers Archie’s face. “You know?”

 

“Yes.” both kids say.

 

“It’s the only exciting thing our parents have ever done!” Lucy adds. Betty is pretty sure she says that because she doesn’t know about the mystery solving or the drug dealing (and hopefully they will never learn about the latter).

 

“When did you tell them?” Archie asks.

 

“When we left the U.S. There was no way around telling them.” Betty said with a shrug. The timer went off for the cookies and she pulled them out of the oven.

 

"We are not allowed to talk about it though." Lucy says with a huff.

 

"Me either." says Archie, with a sigh of fake protest. He attempts to steal one of the cookies from the tray, but they are still too hot, so Betty lightly slaps his arm away.

 

"It doesn't effect you at all!" says Lucy with a sigh. "Our parents have done one cool thing in their whole lives and we are not even allowed to talk about it."

 

Archie laughs and with a wink he says "That's where your wrong. Anything parents do is automatically not cool. Even robbing banks."

 

Jughead offers up an offended "Hey!"

 

Lucy smiles at that. "I guess your right."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone for your feedback! I had so much fun writing this.
> 
>  
> 
> I am on [Tumblr](https://darknessaroundus.tumblr.com/).


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